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COPYRIGKT DEPOSIT. 



The Evangelistic Message 

By 

W. G. Johnston 

B. H. Bruner 



'The fiery tongue is the frontispiece of the New Testament.' 




Chri8tian Board of Publication 

2704-14 Pine Street 

St. Louis, Mo. 



3^ 2^ 

.3* 



Copyright, 1922, 

CHRISTIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION, 

ST. LOUIS, MO. 



(Printed in the U. S. A.) 

©CI.A686575 

OCT 30 72 



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SERMON THEMES 

Page 

" Grievous Times" 7 

The Problem of Evil 13 

The Conditions of a Eeligious Eevival ... 17 

My Part in a Eevival 21 

The Voice of God 26 

What Is Christianity? 31 

The Old Story Is True 36 

Knowledge Through Experience 42 

The Eeality of Sin 47 

The Eeality of Salvation 52 

"He Findeth First His Own Brother" ... 57 

The Lure of the Imagination 64 

The Far Country 69 

The Heart of the Father 74 

The Only Escape 79 

The Man Jesus Called a Fool 83 

The Fatality of Compromise 88 

Sand or Eock . 93 

What We May Do to the Holy Spirit ... 97 

Out of Harmony 101 

Eefusing a Great Invitation 106 

Ourselves and Our Shadows Ill 

Worldliness 116 

Stirring the Eagle's Nest 119 

The Weakness of Strength 125 



4 Sermon Themes 

Page 

When God Is Near 130 

The Holy Spirit as Our Helper 135 

Let Brotherly Love Continue 139 

A Man's Life 144 

The Struggle of a Great Soul 149 

The Perfect Ideal of Life '154 

A Conscience Void of Offence 160 

The Scale of Faith 165 

The Ethics of the Plea for Union .... 171 

Death 175 

The Scientific Demonstration of the Future Life 180 

"Joining the Church" 182 

Who Was Jesus? 186 

The Eternal Christ 190 



BR. FRANK W. GUNSAULUS, Pastor of 
the Central Church, Chicago, and Presi- 
dent of the Armour Institute, said to 
his successor, Dr. Frederick F. Shannon, 
just awhile before his death: "You know 
I never preach nowadays, Shannon, that I 
don't feel like casting the net. I will soon 
be through here, and I want to draw in as 
many souls as possible. Before long, I will 
have to report over Yonder. " 

<$> <♦> <♦> 

Q: OME object to the word "revival. " We 
9y confess to a liking for it. It is denned 
^^ as "times of refreshing from the pres- 
ence of the Lord. ' ' It means that stronger 
energy has been awakened in the people of 
God and that heavenly blossoms have bur- 
geoned forth to adorn life and beautify the 
world. It is a fresh start in the adventure 
of faith. 

"What spring is to the earth, what a 
thunder shower is to a poisoned summer eve- 
ning, what sunlight is to the flowers, what 
a physician is to the sick, what a harvest is 
to mankind, what a vision is to a pilgrim, 
what the morning star is to the lost traveler, 
what a ship is to a drowning man, that true 
evangelism is to a country, a state, a world. 
— Dr. B. A. Abbott, in The Christian-Evan- 
gelist. 



"GRIEVOUS TIMES" 

But know this, that in the last days grievous times 
shall come. — II Tim. 3:1. 

IT was not possible for the church to maintain the 
strength of her first passion. The apostle could 
predict this with certainty; for "the Spirit saith ex- 
pressly, that in the later times some shall fall away 
from the faith.' ' These "later times" are any pe- 
riod of spiritual decline, and we are unquestionably 
in such a period to-day. 

Mr. H. G. Wells' Opinion 

When Mr. Wells wrote his "Outline of History" 
he set forth the whole matter of humanity's effort 
to make progress, and drew the conclusion that the 
world has not changed very much as to fundamen- 
tals. Civilization to-day, as always, has been for too 
few people. Our present civilization is the result 
of the effort, not so much to benefit mankind, as to 
exploit it. Consequently he finds the great financial 
and political interests exercising a too great power 
over human life. It is for these interests that we 
work and usually fight. Our progress toward indus- 
trial and political democracy has been too slow to save 
our civilization, which, the famous author believes, is 
going to smash. The consequences of the wars that 
have already been fought have little or no assurance 
for us. The Greeks had a very fine civilization for 
that time, 500 years before Christ. But they ex- 
hausted themselves fighting, and nothing could stop 
the consequent decline. That has been the history 
of every civilization before our own. They all lived 
by the sword, and by the sword they perished. 



8 The Evangelistic Message 

That, Mr. Wells fears, is what is happening to us. 
He fears that the process of destruction has already 
set in. His pessimistic view of history may be 
summed up in the lines of Omar : 
"They say the lion and the lizard keep 
The courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep ; 
And Bahrain, that great hunter, the wild ass < 
Stamps o'er his head but cannot break his sleep." 

Lawlessness and Irresponsibility 

Mr. James M. Beck, Solicitor General of the 
United States, in an address on "The Spirit of Law- 
lessness' ' warns us against impending disaster. He 
finds "an exceptional revolt against the authority 
of Law." He quotes statistics from the criminal 
courts to show how crime has grown in recent years. 
In the Federal courts pending criminal indictments 
have increased from 9,503 in 1912 to over 70,000 in 
1921. Allowing 30,000 of the cases now pending as 
arising under the prohibition statutes, the increase 
in nine years has been nevertheless 400 per cent. 
Losses from burglaries have grown from $886,000 in 
1914 to over $10,000,000 in 1920 ; and embezzlements, 
in a like period, have increased fivefold. The streets 
of our cities have become the field of operations for 
the footpad and highwayman. In Chicago, 5,000 
automobiles were stolen in a single year. Murder is 
of almost daily occurrence. In New York, in 1917, 
there were 236 murders and only 67 convictions; in 
1918, 221, and 77 convictions. In Chicago, in 1919, 
there were 336, and 44 convictions. Demoralization 
in music, art, poetry, commerce and social life, Mr. 
Beck finds of the same sort. Mr. Owen Johnson 
would bring an indictment on very similar grounds 
in his late novel "The Wasted Generation.' ' And 



"Grievous Times" 9 

Mrs. Mary Eoberts Rinehart, well known novelist 
and writer, in a recent article arraigns this genera- 
tion as "wasters." Speaking of a representative of 
an old American family, who was killed not long 
ago in England as the result of a fall from a pony 
while playing polo, she says: "He had nothing to do 
except to amuse himself, and killed himself in do- 
ing it." 

Not All is Dark and Doubtful 

If history shows anything, it is that in some of the 
darkest periods the foundations were being laid 
upon which a new superstructure would arise. For 
illustration, take the world just before the Reforma- 
tion. The fall of Constantinople brought into Italy 
the scholars from the East. The ancient literature 
of Greece and Rome cast its spell over the strongest 
minds. Valla, Filelso, Beccadelli, Poggio, did their 
best to revive the pre-Christian ideals. Christians 
were barbarians. "All restraint was gone," says 
one writing of those times. "Every breach of the 
ethical demands of Christianity was regarded with 
unaffected delight. These unblushing pagans whose 
writings could not now be published, were in the 
employ of the Popes, and received the last sacra- 
ments of the Church like other men. The Popes 
themselves became pagan. Alexander VI, Julius II, 
and Leo X represent pagan morals seated in the 
papal chair. The form of Catholicism remained, 
but Christianity was literally gone." But God was 
getting ready for a new day. His spirit was at 
work in the hearts of the men who were to break the 
spell of corruption and inaugurate a new era in the 
history of the world. But for the Reformation, 
Christianity would have been lost, Bad as the 



10 The Evangelistic Message 

world is to-day, it is not as bad as it was just prior 
to the Reformation. There are many encouraging 
signs of a return to sanity and salvation through 
Christ. 

Grounds for Hope 

Looking back upon the titanic struggle among the 
nations, there are some values that can be clearly 
seen. Henry Churchill King summarizes some of 
them as follows: — 

World-solidarity; prodigiously increased resources of 
power and wealth and knowledge made possible through 
modern science: forced scientific co-operation on an un- 
heard-of scale: the world-wide trend toward democracy and 
the universal diffusion of knowledge ; the establishment of 
a League of Nations to Enforce Peace, even granting its 
limitations; the steadily growing internationalism; and the 
deepening sense of the necessity of a larger and more signif- 
icant goal for social progress. 

The crisis through which the world has just passed 
was due to man's moral and religious failure. His 
spirituality had been too shallow, his vaunted 
Christian civilization but a thin veneer of gospel. 
There is now hope for better things, because the 
world has been brought to a realization of this 
fact, and consequently put in a more chastened and 
humble mood. 

The Political Rainbow on the World's Horizon 

The failure of the United States to enter the 
League of Nations, that she might contribute her 
mighty influence to the righteous adjustment of 
world-problems and make future wars practically 
impossible, was a source of discouragement to peace- 
loving, idealistic Christians. Then, it looked like 
the Irish question could not be settled, and hence 



"Grievous Times" 11 

further disruption of the world seemed imminent. 
But God spoke, and England and Ireland reached 
an agreement, which bids fair to bring real peace. 
He spoke again in Washington and a good under- 
standing is being sought by the leading nations of 
the world. The times are in His hands. He is grad- 
ually bringing order out of chaos, and enlarging the 
minds of men with the process of the suns. 

The Spirit of Social Justice 

Social data of every nature is being gathered, 
and deductions are being drawn therefrom that will 
ultimately result in better laws, better homes, and 
more sanitary working conditions. Secretary 
Hoover has a large committee of engineers at work 
gathering data and suggesting ways in which the 
lives of workers can be lengthened, made happier 
and more efficient. 

The Direction of Progress 

Man has wrested from the material world some of 
her most important secrets. The result has been a 
vast increase in physical power. His arm has been 
lengthened by mechanical inventions; his eye in- 
creased by the telescope and the microscope, so that 
the things hidden from former generations have 
been revealed to this; his locomotion has been so 
accelerated that distance is practically annihilated; 
and his voice so increased in volume and range by 
amplifiers that he can be heard instantly thousands 
of miles away. But all this has to do largely with 
man's body. His soul has not kept pace. It must 
now increase in faith, hope, and love. Hate must be 
banished from the world. While it lasts there can 
be no concord of nations. The spiritual forces of 



12 The Evangelistic Message 

Christianity, then, constitute the true objective, and 
the only, if the world is to register progress in the 
years to come. Christianity instead of being an 
outworn creed, is the only one that has not been 
seriously tried. It alone has power to heal the hurt 
of the nations. 

John Huss suffered martyrdom in the fifteenth 
century. Awaiting execution in his dungeon, he 
dreamed that pictures of Christ, which he had 
caused to be painted on the walls of his study, had 
been obliterated by the pope. He was grieved. The 
next day he dreamed that a great number of paint- 
ers were restoring the pictures of Christ in greater 
beauty. He saw admiring crowds standing about 
them, and heard them say, "Now let the pope and 
the bishops come ; they will never be able to efface 
them again." He was encouraged. But the friend 
to whom he told his dream warned him against 
trusting in it. Huss answered: "I am not a dreamer, 
but I hold this for certain that the image of Christ 
shall never be effaced. They have wished to destroy 
it, but it shall be painted again in the hearts of men 
by painters abler than myself. The nation which 
loves Jesus Christ will rejoice thereat." The dream 
and the interpretation were true. In the words of 
Dr. John Watson: "Faith may languish; creeds 
may be changed; churches may be dissolved; soci- 
ety may be shattered; but one cannot imagine the 
time when Jesus will not be the fair image of per- 
fection, or the circumstances wherein he will not be 
loved. He can never be superseded; he can never be 
exceeded. Religions will come and go — the passing 
shapes of an eternal instinct; but Jesus will remain 
the standard of the conscience and the satisfaction 
of the heart." 



THE PROBLEM OP EVIL 

* * * lout deliver us from evil. — Matt. 6:13. 

THESE words find a universal response in the hu- 
man heart. From the beginning of conscious life 
on this planet, man has wrestled with the problem 
of evil, and when he has prayed at all, the burden of 
his prayer has been for some kind of deliverance 
from evil. Jesus recognized evil as a fact, and in 
this petition of his prayer, he leaves the impression 
that his Father and our Father has provided a way 
of deliverance from it. 

Can we face the problem of evil in our age and 
be honest, without coming to a place of despair? 
Can we maintain our optimism without a denial of 
the fact of evil? Surely we cannot escape from it 
by assuming the superficial attitude of Christian 
Science. Their way has not worked, either for 
themselves or others. No, we cannot ignore or fail 
to face this problem without being guilty of intel- 
lectual and moral dishonesty. 

Whence Does it Come? 

But when we have admitted the fact, the mind in- 
sists on knowing the source or origin. Two general 
answers have been given to this inquiry. First, that 
evil is an external thing, or force, operating on man 
from the outside. Second, that the problem, or evil 
itself, is rooted in the choices and decisions of the 
human will. If the first position is true, if evil is 
structural in the life of the world as an external 
thing, then men are victims and all talk of a free 
will is foolish. Unless we accept the second posi- 
tion, unless we can take evil "at last to that deep 

13 



14 The Evangelistic Message 

and solemn place where motives are born and deci- 
sions are made, unless we can trail it along its ugly 
path where a free man accepts it or rejects it, we 
have no right to talk about moral responsibility.' 9 

A Difficult Question 

But to accept this second position leads us into a 
new difficulty. Why should this evil which came 
into the world through the wrong choice of the first 
man, be permanently fastened upon the race? The 
Biblical doctrine of original sin is one attempt to 
answer this question ; the scientific theory of hered- 
ity is another. They are different, but do not neces- 
sarily contradict one another. 

Both declare that the evils of the past live in us. 
The sins, and also the virtues of thousands of men 
are trying to express themselves in our bodies. Dr. 
Lynn Harold Hough tells of a story which is written 
by James Lane Allen of a young man who stood be- 
fore the family portraits in his home. He was think- 
ing particularly of two men at whom he was gazing. 
One was a man of austere and sterling character. 
The other was a gay and zestful devourer of all 
which allures the passionate taste. Each of these 
men was an ancestor of the young fellow who stood 
moodily looking upon their pictures. As he stood 
there he knew that those two old men were fighting 
inside him. They had gotten into his blood. And 
there they fought for the boy years and years after 
they were dead. 

The evils of the past live in history and literature. 
Every dream of world dominion that has wrecked 
the lives of nations has been born and kindled by 
the reading of history. The low moral ideals which 
brought the brilliancy and art of the Greeks to the 



The Problem of Evil 15 

dust, are alive in much of our modern literature. 
The evils of the past live in the customs of society 
— the use of intoxicants, the maintaining of large 
armies and navies, etc. 

But all evils, it must be admitted, do not come 
from the past. Environment plays its part as well 
as heredity. Many evils are forced upon us by the 
wrong choices of men today. 

Sin and Evil 

Are we morally responsible for this mass of evil 
which is forced upon us from the past and which 
meets us in the present? The answer to this ques- 
tion calls for a distinction which is fundamental — 
that between evil and sin. "All sin is evil, but all 
evil is not sin." Man is not responsible for the sum 
total of evil either from the past or in the present. 
But when man faces this evil, he and he alone is 
responsible for his attitude toward it. Man has the 
power to accept the evil tendencies from the past, 
combine them with the evil of the present, and 
project them into the future of the race, if he w^ills. 
Evil which a man deliberately chooses for himself 
and for the future of the race becomes for him sin. 
And he cannot take the middle ground, he must 
decide. It is the choice of man which makes this 
fundamental distinction between evil and sin. 

What does this mean? It means as some one has 
said, "that when God made a man He did a danger- 
ous thing.' ' To have a free will, to have a body and 
mind, means that sooner or later the temptation will 
come to choose evil rather than good. "To possess 
a human organism is to have an amazing instrument 
for goodness. It is also an amazing instrument for 
sinning." Dr. Gunsaulus said, "It takes a great 






16 The Evangelistic Message 

man to be a great sinner. David could never have 
been a little sinner." 

Conclusion 

If it is true that we are caught in the coils of evil 
from both the past and the present, and if a choice 
is absolutely necessary, what are we to do about it? 
What is the meaning of this petition, "deliver us 
from evil?" Does God actually take us away from 
evil? No, this is not God's method of deliverance. 
Jesus prayed not that his disciples might be taken 
out of the world but that they might be kept from 
its evil influences. God's way is to deliver us from 
evil by re-enforcing the human will to choose good 
rather than evil. Christianity is God's answer to 
humanity's prayer. 

Through its author, Jesus Christ, it has done two 
things. First, set in motion great ethical and social 
forces which are constantly reducing the sum total 
of evil in the world. It is making human society 
sweeter. Through education and reform it is mak- 
ing it a little easier for each succeeding generation 
to do good and harder for it to do evil. Second, in 
His own Person Jesus has made it easier for men to 
be good. There is something so attractive and com- 
pelling about His Divine Personality that those who 
live close to Him find it easy to choose the right. No 
man has ever come in close contact with Him and 
remained the same man. Salvation, ultimate deliv- 
erance from evil, is only to be found in Him. "There 
is a call for decision lurking in the background of 
every page in the gospels, and a challenge to choose 
the best." 



Note. — For a full and splendid discussion of the whole problem of 
evil see Lecture II in "Productive Beliefs'' by Lynn Harold Hough. 



THE CONDITIONS OP A RELIGIOUS REVIVAL 

Behold, Jehovah's hand is not shortened, that it 
cannot save; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot 
hear: but your iniquities have separated between you 
and your God, and your sins have hid his face from 
you, so that he will not hear. — Isa. 59:1, 2. 

THE need of a genuine revival is apparent. 
There are many symptoms of the waning power 
of religion. Many Christians seem to have lost all 
joy in the religions life. They remain members of 
the church, and attend her services, by force of 
habit largely, but they have no joy in doing so. This 
is a sure symptom of their loss of faith. In many 
lives prayer has ceased to have any vital meaning. 
Many continue to pray, but it is largely a formality, 
a sort of religious etiquette, which, owing to their 
past interest, they feel bound to observe. The in- 
terest in the conversion of souls — real conversion — 
has entirely passed in many churches. There may 
be interest in securing members to help bear the 
financial burdens or to give the church prestige; 
but as to whether these new members shall come in 
just formally, or through an experience of Christ, 
is a matter of indifference — in fact, we fear the pref- 
erence would be against the experience. When 
many churches would have revival meetings, they 
"hire" an evangelist, through a "committee" spe- 
cially appointed to make the business arrangements. 
There is little or nothing said or done about prayer, 
soul-preparation, and reconciliation to God and 
one another. The decadence of religion in many 
churches is appalling. An Indiana pastor in speak- 
ing of the hundreds on his church roll, many of 

17 



18 The Evangelistic Message 

whom were on the absent list, told his congregation 
that several of the "absent" members were in the 
penitentiary. Of course many congregations, in 
truth, would have to acknowledge a similar condi- 
tion. It all points to the loss of vital faith, to the 
absorption of the church in having a "good time," 
and to the lack of authoritative spiritual voices call- 
ing upon the church to repent and do her first 
works over. 

Why Not a Religious Revival? 

If religious conditions are bad, only a revival of 
religion can remedy the situation. Just now there 
is great agitation in behalf of a "revival" in busi- 
ness, and the agitation is bound to produce results. 
Then there are periods of revivals in music, art, 
and literature; and why not also in religion? Many 
profess not to believe in the religious revival; and 
on purely theoretical grounds they should not be 
needed; for the church should be fervently devoted 
to the interests of religion all the time. As a matter 
of practical experience, however, the church does 
not live up to her ideal. She must have "seasons of 
refreshing from the presence of the Lord." Mar- 
tineau speaks of "the tides of the Spirit." Then a 
revival, earnestly and honestly conducted, is not 
nearly so abnormal, as a cold, formal, worldly, and 
loveless church. 

The Fault is Not With God 

His "hand is not shortened, that it cannot save: 
neither is his ear heavy, that it cannot hear." God 
is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. He is 
always truth, mercy, and love. There can be no 
time, in this world, or in any possible world, when 



Conditions of a Religious Revival 19 

he would be unwilling to forgive and restore upon 
the fulfilment of the conditions that would make the 
bestowal of his mercy and healing love worth while. 
" Bring ye the whole tithe into the storehouse, that 
there may be food in my house, and prove me now 
herewith, saith Jehovah of hosts, if I will not open 
you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a 
blessing, that there shall not be room enough to 
receive it" (Mai. 3:10). "And it shall come to pass, 
that whosoever shall call on the name of Jehovah 
shall be delivered" (Joel 2:32; Acts 2:21). There 
can be no unwillingness with God. There can be no 
difficulties on the divine side. On our side, however, 
there are conditions to be met. 

Iniquity Separates Us From God 

Iniquity means all departure from the rectitude 
and law of God. It is crookedness. God's truth, 
God's Spirit, cannot come into us until we have been 
made straight. "If we confess our sins, he is faith- 
ful and righteous to forgive us our sins, and to 
cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9). 
A learned man said, "The three hardest words in 
the English language are 'I was mistaken.' " Fred- 
erick wrote to the German Senate, "I have just lost 
a great battle, and it was entirely my own fault." 
"This confession," said Goldsmith, "displayed more 
greatness than all his victories." "I do plainly and 
ingenuously confess," said the great English Chan- 
cellor, Lord Bacon, in the midst of very trying cir- 
cumstances, "that I am guilty of corruption, and so 
renounce all defense." "I beseech your lordships 
to be merciful to a broken reed." Where the sin 
has been against men, there can be no confidence and 
no salvation, until it is confessed and renounced. 



20 The Evangelistic Message 

Xo revival of religion can take place until sin has 
been dislodged. The revival begins as soon as we 
feel sorrow on account of sin. But so long as sin 
remains, our efforts to find God must prove abortive. 
It is said that if a trolly wire were to be cut, and 
only a thin piece of paper placed between the sev- 
ered ends, it would be sufficient to hold back the 
current coming from the power house from the 
other wire. As soon as the car passed this point it 
would be dead for lack of current, and only the 
thin paper would be the obstruction. In like man- 
ner we obstruct the Holy Spirit on account of our 
sins, both small and great, and there can be no life, 
no help, no revival, no salvation, no connection with 
God, until they have been removed. 



MY PART IN A REVIVAL 

Create in me a clean heart, God; 

And renew a right spirit within me. 

Cast me not away from thy presence; 

And take not thy Holy Spirit from me. 

Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; 

And uphold me with a willing spirit. 

Then will I teach transgressors thy ways; 

And sinners shall be converted unto thee. * * * 

For thou delightest not in sacrifice; else would I 
give it: 

Thou hast no pleasure in burnt offering. 

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: 

A broken and a contrite heart, God, thou wilt not 
despise.— From Psalm 51. 

THE part we take in anything depends largely 
upon our estimated importance of that thing for 
us. What are we to have in the way of dividends, of 
pleasure, of power, of social prestige ? we ask, when 
being urged to do this or that. The same question 
often arises with the seekers after God. "Then 
Peter answered and said unto him, Lo, we have left 
all, and followed thee; what then shall we have?" 
(Matt. 19:27). It is but natural that we should first 
of all seek firm ground for our own souls;- for if 
there is no personal assurance of salvation, we can 
make little or no contribution to the kingdom of 
God. But the nature of the new state into which we 
come by conversion is such, that we immediately 
cease to think about what we shall have and begin 
to think about the good of others — especially their 
salvation. It is written of Paul that after his con- 
version he "straightway # # * proclaimed Jesus, 

21 



22 The Evangelistic Message 

that he is the Son of God" (Acts 9:20). But this 
" first love" often grows cold. The chilling winds 
of worldliness blow upon it and cool its ardor. Lit- 
tle by little the things of the world creep into the 
heart, polluting and destroying its power. Hence 
the members of the church are in great danger of 
becoming "no lovers of good, traitors, headstrong, 
puffed up, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of 
God ; holding a form of godliness, but having denied 
the power thereof" (2 Tim. 3:3-5). The first part, 
consequently, that the individual Christian should 
perform in helping to bring on a revival, is to be 
absolutely honest with himself and God, confess 
his sins and, without any mental reservation, turn 
from them. This opens the channel for the grace of 
God. 

Our Constant Need of Watchfulness 

The Master exhorted the disciples to "Watch and 
pray, that ye enter not into temptation" (Matt. 26: 
41) ; and Paul said, "I buffet my body, and bring it 
into bondage : lest by any means, after that I have 
preached to others, I myself should be rejected" 
(1 Cor. 9:27). Then there is the exhortation to 
"make our calling and election sure." There was 
once a congressman in Massachusetts who failed of 
election by two votes. He was so sure of his election 
that he took no interest in a certain small town. 
There were no speeches, no fire works, no parades. 
Nothing was done to disturb the apathy of the vot- 
ers, and hence they did not turn out to vote for him. 
This neglect lost him the whole election. Some 
Christians are so sure of going to heaven because 
they have been baptized and are in regular stand- 
ing, that they fail to covet earnestly the best gifts, 



My Part in a Revival 23 

and to renew their diligence in prayer and good 
works. 

The Need of a New Heart 

The heart is the center of our intellectual and af- 
fectional life. If it becomes corrupted, the whole 
man is affected. It must be renewed, and kept pure 
and sweet, if the life is to exhale fragrance as a 
flower. "Born again' '; yes, and again, and again. 
When Sir Walter Ealeigh closed his illustrious ca- 
reer on the scaffold of an ungrateful country, and 
laid his head upon the block, he was asked by the 
executioner whether it lay right. "Whereupon, 
with the calmness of a hero, and the faith of a Chris- 
tian/ ' says Guthrie, "he returned an answer, the 
power of which we shall feel when our head is toss- 
ing and turning on death's uneasy pillow: 'It mat- 
ters little, my friend, how the head lies provided the 
heart is right. 7 Jp t ^^ZL .^^yz^ 

The Need of a Right Spirit S^^^ 

A "right spirit" is very nearly synonymous with 
good will; and good will is one of the most important 
forces in the world. The will is the whole man in 
action. It represents his attitude to all the problems 
of life. It definitely means the casting of whatever 
influence he has on the right side of things. He will 
eschew merely selfish interests and work for the 
general good. It is this "right spirit" that is sorely 
needed to-day. International good will is wanting, 
notwithstanding our international conferences of 
many kinds. The nations cannot dwell together in 
amity until they have good will toward each other. 
Good will is always unselfish will, and means the 
application of whatever force it has for the estab- 




24 The Evangelistic Message 

lishment of righteousness in the world. The prayer 
for a right spirit strikes deep into the reality of 
things, and to have it answered means the renewal 
of the face of the earth. 

The Need of the Joys of Salvation 

The religion of Jesus is preeminently a religion of 
joy. There have been philosophies many, and reli- 
gions many, but only one Gospel, one Good News. 
Life without joy is existence in a prison. It is the 
joy of life that makes it worthwhile. "Rejoice in 
the Lord always: and again I will say, Rejoice" 
(Philippians 4:4), is the exhortation of Paul. The 
Christian carries the secret of a happy life in his 
heart. He is not dependent upon favorable circum- 
stances for the joy of his existence. A joyless Chris- 
tian is an anomaly — indeed, he can hardly be called 
one at all. Then it is certain that such cannot suc- 
cessfully recommend their religion to others. This 
joy precedes the conversion of sinners. A revival 
means increase of joy. One of the best ways for a 
church member to help bring about a revival of 
religion is for him to be restored unto "the joy of 
thy salvation.' ' 

Our Need of God's Willing Spirit 

When the psalmist speaks of God's "willing" or 
"free" spirit he uses an expressive way of saying 
that God is untrammeled in any way, and is at lib- 
erty to help anywhere, any time, he may be called 
upon. We are in constant need of this help. Jesus 
promised the Holy Spirit — the Comforter, Paraclete, 
Helper — to his disciples. Paraclete means one called 
to the side of another to help. We find temptation 
too great for us, we call to our aid the Paraclete, 



My Part in a Revival 25 

the Helper; we find our work too difficult, we call 
upon him again; we find our burdens greater than 
we can bear, and our Helper is near to lift the load. 

Our Need of the Sacrifices of a Broken Spirit 

Here is a beautiful Hebrew parable that forcibly 
illustrates the need of a broken spirit in order to be 
accepted with God: — 

"A poor penitent who had just risen from a sick 
bed came up to worship before the Lord. He could 
now scarcely sustain his tottering limbs. The words 
of the Psalm were like cordial to his sinking spirit. 
One after another brought his sacrifice and was ac- 
cepted; but the penitent had none. At length he 
drew near the priest and said, 'Last night a poor 
widow and her children came to me, and I had noth- 
ing to give her but two pigeons which were ready 
for sacrifice.' 'Why then art come to see me, my 
son?' 'I heard them singing "The sacrifices of God 
are a broken spirit.' ' Will he not accept mine? 
God be merciful to me a sinner.' The old priest was 
melted, and tears came to his eyes as he raised the 
poor penitent. He laid his hands on his head: 
'Blessed be thou, my son! Thine offering is ac- 
cepted. It is better than a thousand rivers of oil. 
Jehovah make his face to shine upon thee and give 
thee peace.' " 



THE VOICE OF GOD 

* # * jifag fc m y g on ^ ^ e Beloved, listen to Mm. — 
Mark 9:7 (Moffatt). 

ON the night of April 23, 1920, we are told the 
planet Mars was much nearer the earth than it 
has been for many years. Rev. Hubert L. Simpson in 
his book, "The Intention of His Soul," tells of two 
noted scientists who, all night long were on the alert 
for wireless messages that would prove the presence 
of intelligent beings in Mars and their desire to 
communicate with the sons of earth. He quotes 
from the press reports two significant paragraphs : 

"Lengthening their sound waves they sent their 
ears past the radius of the world's noises, past a 
violent electrical storm in the upper strata of our 
atmosphere, out into limitless space, that dead cold 
vacuum in which throughout eternity our world has 
been spinning. But all was silence. No answering 
sound wave flashed out of infinity, and Mars pur- 
sues its path in wordless disdain. • • • But at 
least we are left with a marvelous picture of two 
patient men listening, listening, listening, to that 
ageless silence in which the world was born, listen- 
ing in sure certainty that one day that silence will 
not be a gulf but a bridge over which we will carry 
at last the triumphant standards of humanity." 

"And," says Dr. Simpson, "if I were an artist 
I should want to try and put upon canvas that 
picture of these listening men. For it is the ear of 
humanity that is astrain through the throbbing 
silence of that night to catch the voice that never 

26 



The Voice of God 27 

spoke. * # * Oh, for one word, one little spoken 
word ! How much it might have meant ! That night 
when others were dancing and chambering and 
slumbering the ear of man might have heard the 
word for which the ages have been waiting." 

A Better Way 

With thoughts like these the preacher tells us 
how he laid down his morning newspaper and 
picked up a little book to read again a letter written 
by a fisherman almost two thousand years ago. And 
as he read, with the sense of disappointment in his 
heart that always comes to humanity when some 
great scientific experiment fails, these words struck 
his eye: "And I think it right, so long as I am in 
this tent, to stir you up by putting you in remem- 
brance # # * For we did not follow cunningly 
devised fables, when we made known unto you the 
power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we 
were eye-witnesses of His Majesty. For he received 
from God the Father honor and glory, when there 
came such a voice to him from the excellent glory, 
'This is my beloved Son * # *' this voice we our- 
selves heard come out of heaven, we who were be- 
side him on the sacred hill." 

In the hour when the mind and skill of man has 
reached its limit — when some lonely pioneer has 
fought his way across the trackless spaces of the 
universe and stands on its outer rim baffled because 
he can go no further — while the world looks on in 
disappointment, it is always some man of God who 
breaks the silence by pointing humanity again to 
this "sacred hill." There, while three awed and 
frightened men listened the silence of heaven was 
broken and humanity heard God's voice. 



28 The Evangelistic Message 

"Listen to Him" 

This is God's supreme word to men. The voice 
of God had been heard by man before. The first 
man heard it when he was driven out of the garden. 
Abraham heard it calling him into a larger life. 
Moses heard it speaking the divine law on Sinai. 
The Hebrew prophets heard it. But never had the 
voice of God spoken any such message as this. His 
final revelation of Himself was to be in a Person, 
and His final message to those who would hear His 
voice is. "Listen to Him. " The language which God 
speaks to the soul of man now is the language of 
contact with a Living Personalitv — "His Son the 
Beloved. " 

When Jesus first spoke, humanity marveled. 
They had never heard such a voice before. The ver- 
dict of those men who were sent by the authorities 
to arrest Him, and who returned empty handed to 
say, "Never man spake like this man," is the ver- 
dict of all who heard Him. 

When men listened to Jesus speak, new concep- 
tions of the fundamental forces and relationships 
of life were born. In the words of Jesus they found 
a new conception of God; a new conception of man, 
of the worth of the individual; a new conception of 
sin, of its terribleness ; a new conception of for- 
giveness, a forgiveness rooted not in human sacri- 
fices, but in Divine love; a new conception of love 
as being a spirit of good will toward all men; a 
new conception of brotherhood, of the essential 
unity and solidarity of the race; and a new and 
glorious conception of the immortality of the soul. 

Not one of these conceptions lias been outgrown. 
The world must still listen to the voice of Jesus 



The Voice of God 29 

Christ for its deepest wisdom in things spiritual. 
If you would know God, man, the meaning of life, 
the meaning of love, the meaning of brotherhood, 
the truth of immortality — any of these things 
which the soul is constantly striving after, "Listen 
to Him." The verdict of humanity in its sanest 
moments is that Jesus Christ represents the last 
great word from the voice of God. No one has 
voiced this feeling better than Prof. Glover: 

"The world, in its more quiet and candid moods, 
when it is not controversial, knows quite well by 
now that the character and personality of Jesus are 
the ultimate standard. However uncertain about 
God we may be, Christian and non-Christian alike, 
deep in our hearts, if we put it in plain language, 
we have a feeling that if God really is like Jesus 
Christ, things are all right. In blunter language, 
what we really mean is this, that if God will mould 
himself on the example of Jesus, then we can trust 
Him. That means that, for everyone who is dissat- 
isfied with the justice of the world, there is eventu- 
ally one court of appeal, the tribunal of Jesus Christ, 
that we live in a world where Jesus is the last 
word." 

Those Who Refuse 

But there were those who refused to listen to 
Jesus while he was on earth. He came unto his own 
people as God's supreme revelation, but they re- 
ceived him not. After pleading with them in vain 
all Jesus could do was to stand broken-hearted above 
their Holy City and pour out his soul in disappoint- 
ment (Matt. 23:37-38). Jesus closed his Sermon on 
the Mount with a warning of the fate awaiting those 
who refuse to hear his words (Matt. 7:24-27). In 



30 The Evangelistic Message 

the action of the Rich Young Ruler, of Judas, and 
Pilate, we see the results, in character, of those who 
refused to listen. Those in the parables who are 
left on the outside of closed doors, and those who 
are cast out into the darkness, are those who have 
refused to listen. And in the picture of the last 
judgment those who "depart to everlasting punish- 
ment" are those who failed to heed the voice of 
God speaking in Jesus. 

Is there not a warning here for our age? Who 
can read the words of Jesus standing over Jeru- 
salem without feeling that he had the same love 
for our civilization, and had we listened to him we 
might have been spared the desolation of war? Can 
we not see in the faces of the multitudes who rush 
madly and blindly past us on every side, seeking 
they know not what, the anguish of those who real- 
ize they have built their houses on the sand? There 
is no uncertainty in the New Testament concerning 
the fate of those who refused to listen, and there is 
no mistaking their fate to-day. 

Conclusion 

"Never man spake like this man," and it is His 
voice we need to hear. It is the only voice that can 
speak a message of peace and good will to the na- 
tions. It is the only voice that can speak a message 
of brotherhood to an age torn by class strife. It is 
the only voice that can speak a message of redemp- 
tion to the souls of men and women who are lost in 
selfishness and sin, and call them back to the Fa- 
ther^ house. "Listen to Him." 



WHAT IS CHRISTIANITY? 

For I know him whom I have believed * * *— 
II Tim. 1:2. 

For me to live is Christ * * *—Philippians 1 :12. 

THE difficulty of even attempting to answer this 
question is apparent to any one who thinks. 
What we shall say in this sermon is only suggestive 
of some lines of thought and action along which the 
church must travel in these days if it would make 
any deep impression on the average individual. 
Two important considerations make necessary a re- 
examination of some things we have always taken 
for granted. First, a widespread feeling that the 
church has demanded more of those who would be- 
come Christians than the Lord and his Apostles 
themselves demanded. Second, the amazing revela- 
tion which came to religious workers among our sol- 
diers of the average man's ignorance of what Chris- 
tianity really is. 

The Church and Christianity 

It was stated by a great scholar before the war 
that, "Never before were so many men filled with 
such longing * * * for firm and consistent convic- 
tions. Men are ready to give anything for a con- 
viction — for a belief that is really believed in. The 
demand is for faith in which there is real faith; 
men require convictions as to the meaning of life." 
These words are more true now than then, for the 
war shattered what little faith many men had. 
Men now want a basis of life "which is just as cred- 
ible to their intellect as it is inspiring to their 

31 



32 The Evangelistic Message 

souls. " They want a religion which appeals to the 
whole man ; one that has in it the call to the heroic. 
What has the church offered? Too often only 
creeds, dogmas, confessions of faith, and the specu- 
lations of pious men. Every age has added to the 
requirements for entrance into the church. The first 
century church insisted upon the acceptance of a 
large part of the Jewish Ritualism. The church in 
the Roman Empire made much that was purely 
X>agan a test of membership. The church of the 
Middle Ages made the rigid interpretations of 
philosopher and theologian the door to membership. 
And so on down to the day of the modern creeds. 
What passed in those ages cannot get by the inquir- 
ing mood of the modern mind. People are tired of 
being told they must believe everything under the 
sun to become members of the Christian church. 
What our age wants, and has a right to expect from 
the church, is a positive statement of the great fun- 
damental doctrines and ideals of Christianity, which 
will appeal equally to the mind and the heart. 

The Average Man and Christianity 

The soldiers in the late war represented the aver- 
age man on the street. What was discovered con- 
cerning their knowledge of Christianity is largely 
true of the average man's knowledge now. Two 
questions were asked of the religious workers in 
the army. First, "Have the men in general any 
clear idea of what Christianity is?" Second, "Do 
they think of the Christian life as the following of 
negative commandments, or as a life of active good 
will?" By far the larger part of the answers to 
the first question reveal the fact that the soldiers 
had very little clear knowledge of the real nature of 



What Is Christianity 33 

Christianity. The answers to the second question 
show that the vast majority of the men looked upon 
the Christian life as the following of negative rules. 
As one man expressed it, "Christianity means life 
with all pleasure, pure or otherwise, crossed out 
with the words, 'Thou shalt not.' " For the amaz- 
ing revelation which these answers contain every 
religious worker should read the report of the com- 
mission under the title "The Army and Religion/' 
published by the Association Press. And there an- 
swers represent the knowledge and the attitude of 
the average man toward Christianity. 

What is Christianity? 

One set of men hold it is a philosophy deducted 
from the gospels. Another, that it has nothing to 
do with philosophy, but only with "feeling, suffer- 
ing, sinning humanity." Still another affirms that 
its genius is essentially economic. 

Another point of discussion concerns the question 
whether Christianity is a belief or a life. Many 
assert that it is primarily a belief, "the intellectual 
acceptance of a body of truth and doctrine. " But 
in the light of the Scriptures this conception does 
not stand. Jesus declared that even the demons 
believed that he was the Christ. He also said that 
the confession, "Lord, Lord/' was not sufficient for 
salvation. Another group asserts that Christianity 
is primarily a life, irrespective and independent of 
belief. No matter what you believe if your life is 
right. But this position does not stand the light of 
history and experience. History has been made, and 
is being made by men of powerful beliefs. 

Both are wrong. Christianity is both belief and 
life. "It is belief, deep, strong, insistent and com- 



34 The Evangelistic Message 

pelling ; but it is also life, positive, definite, holy and 
unselfish. * * * It is belief voicing itself in life, 
and it is life flowering in belief.' 7 

Belief and Lite 

Here Paul speaks the great message which the 
church needs to-day. Great theologian, and master 
of apologetics and doctrine that he was, when he 
came to sum up the total and absolute meaning of 
Christianity for himself he said, "I know him 
whom I have believed. * * * For me to live is 
Christ.' ' This is the answer to our question. 

Christianity is a belief, but a belief in a "whom' r 
and not in a "what"; in a living personality and 
not in a dead system of doctrine. And a belief in 
a person is much different from a belief in a book or 
a doctrine. It demands more than the working of 
the intellect. It demands the devotion and loyalty 
of the soul. 

Christianity is a life. It is a reproduction of the 
life of this Risen Glorified Christ in whom Paul be- 
lieved. This was the only passion of Paul's great 
soul. Christianity is Christ made real in human 
conduct — the saving of human society by bringing 
the ideals of Christ into all of its relationships 
through individuals. 

Conclusion 

If Christianity is essentially belief and life, are 
the forms in which it is expressed in our church or- 
ganizations necessary? Yes, because practically all 
of these forms, which are as old as the New Testa- 
ment, center around the person and work of Christ. 
However much thev have been abused at the hands 



What Is Christianity 35 

of the church they came into being because of their 
relation to Christ. 

The ordinances were all designed to honor the 
Eisen Lord. The Lord's Day was kept sacred in 
memory of his resurrection. The Lord's Supper was 
a memorial supper for him. And Christian bap- 
tism, around which so much needless and divisive 
discussion has centered, was directly connected w^ith 
Christ. It was a symbol of his burial and resurrec- 
tion. Men and women were asked to believe in him 
as Savior and Lord before they were baptized. 
Then, they were baptized into him, buried with him, 
as a pledge of their loyalty and as a token of their 
desire to rise to walk with him in a new life. 

With the conception of Christianity as a positive 
belief in Christ and a positive life for Christ, we 
can meet the man who refuses to accept all the no- 
tions of any church and give him two definite things 
to do. And we can meet the man who is ignorant 
of the real nature of Christianity with the challenge 
to follow a great, Living Personality, in whose 
service there is a call for all the latent heroism in 
the human soul. 



THE OLD STORY IS TRUE 

For we did not follow cunningly devised fables, 
when we made known unto you the power and coming 
of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of 
his majesty. — II Peter 1:16. 

MANY and profound have been the changes 
since these words were penned. We live in a 
new world of science and mechanical power; indeed, 
it seems that the world of fairy lore and magic has 
become the real world; the dreams and fancies of 
the ancients, the familiar realities of the present. 
We penetrate, scrutinize, analyze, and synthesize 
everything under the sun, and beyond the sun, both 
visible and invisible. The modern spirit has also 
been a destroying spirit sweeping over the world 
like a besom of destruction. Many false gods lie 
prone in its wake, and many venerable superstitions 
have crumbled at its touch. How fares it with the 
old story of Jesus and his resurrection? Can we 
still believe it? Or, has this fierce, questioning, 
modern spirit digged away the foundations? We 
believe it was never more secure than it is to-day. 
The testing fires have only refined and strength- 
ened it. 

The Competence of the Witnesses 

All things are established upon the testimony of 
men concerning the what and how of their experi- 
ences. What we know in any department of sci- 
ence, literature, or philosophy, depends upon cred- 
ible testimony. What we know about the resur- 
rection of Christ is based upon the testimony of 
those who had actual experience of His resurrection. 

36 



The Old Story Is True 37 

Were these witnesses qualified? That they were, 
appears from several considerations. (1) They were 
well acquainted with Jesus. They had for several 
months been intimately associated with Him, and, 
hence, would be able to recognize Him, not only from 
His physical features, but also from His general char- 
acter. (2) There was a lack of expectancy on the 
part of the disciples. When the women returned 
from the tomb with the resurrection message to the 
apostles, " these words appeared in their sight as 
idle talk; and they disbelieved them" (Luke 24:11). 
This, of course, heightens their testimony, as they 
were convinced in the face of their unbelief. (3) The 
witnesses had ample opportunity to get all the facts. 
They saw, conversed, and ate with Him after He was 
risen. They saw the empty tomb, and knew that it 
was empty. (4) The variety of the circumstances 
under which He appeared to them, is another evi- 
dential fact. (5) Then there is the positiveness of 
their testimony. Whatever may have been the cir- 
cumstances in which Christ manifested Himself to 
different disciples at different times, there is unan- 
imous agreement that He did manifest Himself in life 
after death. They all agree that they saw him, not 
once, but some of them several times. On this one 
vital, supreme fact they are in absolute agreement. 
(6) When we consider their sincerity, we seem to 
have the crowning evidence that they "did not 
follow cunningly devised f ablest ' They lived lives 
of self-denial, and most of them sealed their testi- 
mony with their own blood. These men and women 
were competent witnesses on the ground of both 
experience and character, and their testimony is 
indubitable, unassailable, unshakable, and absolutely 
convincing to fair-minded, reasonable people. 



38 The Evangelistic Message 

The Transmission of the Testimony 

If it be admitted that the testimony is credible 
and genuine, what assurance have we that it has 
been passed on to us in an unimpaired condition? 

(1) The oldest New Testament manuscript is not 
earlier than the fourth century ; but there are a num- 
ber of documents reaching back to the apostles 
themselves which contain a sufficient number of 
quotations from the gospels to show their early or 
first century origin. Thus by means of these quota- 
tions we can trail the existence of the gospels back 
to apostolic days; just as the pioneers, wandering 
through American forests, were able to find their 
way back by means of blazed trees. 

(2) There has always been an oral tradition in the 
church in support of the genuineness and credibility 
of the gospels. This tradition has persisted from the 
earliest times to the present, and is entitled to cer- 
tain evidential value. 

(3) The fact of the church bears its own testi- 
mony. It is here to-day; and we can trace its his- 
tory back through the centuries as far as Christ, 
and after that we fail to find it. It must, therefore, 
according to its own claim, have been in its origin 
vitally connected with Him. Rev. J. J. Haley once 
told of an experience he had on the ocean. In the 
midst of a perfectly calm and cloudless day, the 
ship began to roll heavily on account of the sudden 
appearance of great waves. It was a matter of as- 
tonishment that such a thing should happen. An 
explanation was asked of the Captain, who told them 
that there had been an earthquake somewhere, and 
the waves set in motion were just reaching them. 
They could be traced back to the earthquake. So 



The Old Story Is True 39 

with the church. Christ was responsible, through 
the power of His resurrection, for the origin and 
mighty sweep of the church. The church, whatever 
the varying form of her doctrine and organization, 
has had an unbroken existence from apostolic times 
to the present, and has been the custodian of both 
the written and oral testimony concerning the res- 
urrection of Christ. 

The Resurrection and a New Humanity 

In the early Christian centuries, there was a wide- 
spread belief that Christ had created a new race, a 
new humanity, very different from any race then 
existing upon the earth. And there was truth in 
this. The resurrection of Christ was the beginning 
of this new humanity. It was established on such 
indubitable grounds, that men could neither doubt 
nor deny; and, consequently, aided by the presence 
of the life-giving Spirit, men were begotten again, 
born again, became a veritable new creation in 
Christ, animated and guided by the most unselfish 
and exalted spiritual motives. A new interest in 
human life and welfare rapidly manifested itself 
wherever the gospel of the resurrection was 
preached. The spirit of selfishness, of vindictiveness 
and cruelty, began to pass away. Slavery was pow- 
erfully affected. In its external form it did not 
immediately pass; but its status was changed. In 
Christ there w^as neither bond nor free. Masters 
learned to love their slaves and to treat them as 
brothers. Our modern era sees chattel slavery gone. 
It could not bide the Spirit and teaching of Christ. 
Then consider how the feelings of humanity have 
been refined. One of the early decrees of Constan- 
tine, the first Christian Emperor, was against the 



40 The Evangelistic Message 

amphitheatre. The public conscience, refined 
through the gospel, ratified the imperial decree and 
the amphitheatre with its bloody orgies ceased. The 
gospel gave a dignity to labor never known before. 
The early Christians, as their Lord before them, 
labored diligently with their hands. The home came 
to have a more beautiful meaning under the gospel. 
Woman was given a more exalted place, and little 
children were of the kingdom of heaven. The an- 
cient world was practically destitute of any sort of 
generosity. The church organized the charities and 
beneficences of that early time; and the vast char- 
ities and benevolent institutions of our time are 
both directly and indirectly the result of the gospel 
of the resurrection. These beneficent and wonder- 
ful changes in the world can all be traced, for their 
full measure, to the resurrection of Christ. They, 
therefore, constitute an important branch of evi- 
dence in behalf of his resurrection. 

The Awful Alternative 

An Englishman wrote a novel some years ago in 
which he set forth the supposed finding of archaeo- 
logical evidence that definitely disproved the resur- 
rection. He pictured with dramatic power the 
gloom that settled upon the civilized world, unre- 
lieved by a single ray of light. Paul had thought of 
that dreadful alternative also, and it was unspeak- 
able even at that early day when Christianity had 
yet to win its greatest triumphs. "And if Christ is 
not risen," he says, "it follows that what we preach 
is a delusion, and that your faith also is a delusion. 
Nay more, we are actually being discovered to be 
bearing false witness about God, because we have 
testified that God raised Christ to life, whom He did 



The Old Story Is True 41 

not raise, if in reality none of the dead are raised, 
For if none of the dead are raised to life, then Christ 
has not risen; and if Christ has not risen, your faith 
is a vain thing — you are still in your sins. It fol- 
lows also that those who have fallen asleep in Christ 
have perished. If in this present life we have a 
hope resting on Christ and nothing more, we are 
more to be pitied than all the rest of the world' ' 
(1 Cor. 15:14-19. Weymotith). 

There are so many things that are that would not 
he, but for the resurrection of our Lord, — things 
that have so wonderfully enriched, deepened and 
strengthened our lives — that it would be like tearing 
out our hearts were it possible to give up the doc- 
trine of the resurrection. 

The Old Story is true. All the evidence points 
one way. Without mental reservation we can af- 
firm to-day, as did the first "eyewitnesses of His 
majesty," the fact and power of His resurrection. 

And it is a logical and necessary inference that His 
teaching is true, and the salvation offered to sinners 
a real deliverance from the power and dominion of 
sin. 



KNOWLEDGE THROUGH EXPERIENCE 

But Naaman was wroth, and went away, and said, 
Behold, I thought * * * And he returned to the 
man of God, he and all his company, and came and 
stood before him; and he said, Behold now, I know 
* * *_// Rings 5:11, 15. 

"TOEHOLD I thought." This is where Naaman 
-D began. " Behold, now I know." This is 
where he ended. It is generally somewhere between 
these two extremes that men who are in Naaman 's 
condition find themselves. The story of Naaman is 
so human that it is always full of interest. It gives 
us the picture of a man who came to a knowledge 
of the way of salvation through experience. 

What Naaman Thought 

Naaman thought he knew a great deal. He was 
sure of three things. He thought he knew just how 
a prophet of God should go about curing his disease. 
He thought that to cure so great a disease he must 
necessarily do some great thing, something spec- 
tacular. He thought the rivers of his own land were 
better than the river Jordan. There was little 
chance for an argument with Naaman on these 
three points. 

And his presumptions were not groundless. They 
were based upon his worldly knowledge. He was 
a man of high standing in military circles. He was in 
the habit of being honored. According to all that he 
knew about hospitality and courtesy the prophet 
should have come from his house and offered him the 
honors due a visiting military leader. According 
to his way of thinking a man must always pay in 

42 



Knowledge Through Experience 43 

kind for any services rendered him. For a big favor 
he must pay a big price. He went prepared to do 
this. And according to his standards of measure- 
ments there was no comparison between the muddy 
Jordan and the clear, pure waters of Abana and 
Pharpar. In his thinking Naaman was not all 
wrong. These things were true to a certain extent. 
Where he made his mistake was in forgetting one 
important thing. He forgot what he was seeking 
at the hands of the prophet. 

If he had been coming to visit the prophet as a 
representative of his nation he might have expected 
to be received with honor. If he had come to pur- 
chase military supplies he might have expected to 
pay a big price. If he had been looking for a place 
to take a refreshing bath, he naturally would have 
selected his own rivers in preference to the Jordan. 
But this was not his mission. He was a leper and 
he had come to this man of God seeking salvation, 
relief from this death-dealing disease. He was 
looking for salvation from God and yet he was 
wroth because God did not work in man's ways. 
He wanted to dictate the terms and conditions of 
his own salvation. He was like the tramp who re- 
fused a bread and butter sandwich saying he did 
not like bread and butter. He thought he knew 
how God ought to save him. And here is where he 
came near making a fatal mistake. The only 
thing that saved him was the fact that he cooled 
off enough to listen to the common sense of one of 
his servants. 

A Very Common Mistake 

Naaman 's was a very common mistake. Thou- 
sands are making it every day. They come to the 



44 The Evangelistic Message 

church with just as absurd demands. They think 
the church ought to take notice of their social or 
business position and make a big fuss over them. 
They feel they must be allowed to do some spec- 
tacular thing when they decide to become Chris- 
tians. They are very much surprised and dis- 
pleased when they are told they must give up some 
of their social life and do some of the humble 
work of the church. When you tell them they are 
supposed to attend church they say, "Are not the 
automobile and the ' movies' much better than 
the church? Why go to a dull church service 
when you can go to a live show?" Like Naaman 
these people forget what the church is for and 
what they ought to be seeking when they go to church. 
The church is not an institution for the purpose 
of coddling people. The true man of God in the 
pulpit will not make a great show over any one 
man or class of men just for their patronage, and 
to satisfy their vanity. If men are looking for a 
place where they will be honored and coddled at 
every turn they will be disappointed in the church. 
If men are looking for a way of buying salvation 
through some big gift or some spectacular piece of 
work, they are looking in the wrong place when 
they approach a true church of Jesus Christ. There 
may be churches in which this is done, just as 
there were plenty of prophets in Elisha's day who 
would have been glad to take Naaman's gifts, 
but they are not true churches. And if men are 
looking for mere entertainment, they are looking 
in the wrong direction when they expect to find 
it in the church. The services of the church must 
always be interesting and attractive, but their aim 
is not to entertain. 



Knowledge Through Experience 45 

What Naaman Found Out 

Here are some of the things Naaman learned. 
He came to know that there was a true God who 
could save men — a wonderful discovery. He came 
to know that God does not work as men do. He 
came to know that genuine obedience is worth 
more in the sight of God than all the great things 
a man may be able to do. He came to know that 
for his purposes the muddy waters of the Jordan 
were worth far more than the clear waters of his 
own rivers. Through the experience of obeying 
the voice of God through his prophet he gained 
salvation and knowledge. Before, he could only 
say, " Behold, I thought." Now he could speak 
with the assurance of a man who knew. 

Other people have had this same experience, and 
it has been the means of their salvation. There are 
some things about the plan of salvation which has 
been offered by the various churches that any man 
has a right to question. But there is a plan of sal- 
vation outlined on the pages of the New Testament 
which any intelligent man can read for himself 
and understand, and which no man dare call in 
question. God's ways in salvation are not man's 
ways. 

Conclusion 

In the life of one of the greatest New Testament 
characters we have an illustration of this same 
principle of knowledge through experience. In 
the beginning of his career Paul said concerning 
Christianity, "Behold I thought". At the end of 
his wonderful life he could say, "I know". The 
secret of Paul's knowledge, and that which trans- 
formed his life completely, was his absolute sur- 



46 The Evangelistic Message 

render of self to God. In his letters one of his 
constant themes is the will of God. In 1 Thessa- 
lonians he defines the will of God (4:2-12). In Ga- 
latians he sounds a protest against the attempt to 
substitute moral living for the life of absolute sur- 
render. In 1 Corinthians he demonstrates that 
God's will can be done in all professions and by all 
kinds of men (7:20-24; 10:31). Romans contains 
his protest against the attempt to substitute mem- 
bership in an established religious body for the 
life of absolute self -surrender (6:13; 8:14, 15; 12:1). 
In Colossians he demonstrates the relation of 
obedience to wisdom (1:9-10; 2:3). In Ephesians 
he restates again in practical terms what God's 
will is (4:25 to 5:17). In Philippians he asserts 
that God can use everything which befalls a man 
who is living the surrendered life — suffering, op- 
position, death — so that he will rejoice and glory in 
his sufferings and feel that for Jesus' sake, even 
to die is gain (1:21; 2:5-11). He also demonstrates 
in this letter that a sure issue of obedience is a 
mighty power to achieve results (4:13). Shall we 
follow the example of these two men through obe- 
dience to the will of God into a knowledge which 
shall issue in our own salvation? 



THE REALITY OP SIN 

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, 
and the truth is not in us. — I John 1:8. 

EVEEY great religion has assumed that some- 
thing is wrong with humanity. Both Judaism 
and Christianity, the religions of the Bible, have 
given the name sin to this disorder. There is a 
close relationship between the Old and New Testa- 
ment conceptions of sin, and yet in many ways 
they differ. The Old Testament assumes that 
man's condition as a spiritual being is not what it 
was meant to be by his Creator. The terrible 
nature of sin is nowhere more forcibly shown than 
in the preaching of the long line of Hebrew 
• prophets. 

The New Testament completes the conception of 
sin toward which the Hebrew conscience had been 
slowly working its way. The meaning of the 
term which Jesus used most frequently for sin is, 
"missing the mark". In his eyes those who had 
sinned had missed the mark of their high calling 
as sons and daughters of God. In the epistles of 
Paul we have a very full discussion of sin. Paul 
has as the background for all his thoughts on sin 
the moral order of the universe. To this order all 
men are responsible, and sin is that which keeps 
them from measuring up to this responsibility. 
It is a universal fact: "All have sinned and come 
short of the glory of God. ' ' 

A Declining Sense of Sin 

The reality of sin is nowhere questioned in the 
Bible. But men in every age have questioned it, 

47 



48 The Evangelistic Message 

and the declining sense of the reality of sin is one 
of the most deadly perils to which man is exposed. 
That peril was never greater than to-day. The 
early Christians saw sin in its naked ugliness; 
lust and cruelty wore no disguise "in the time 
when Paul was warning the cultivated Corinthians 
in the most beautiful city in the world against a 
sin so loathsome that it is mentioned under the 
breath to-day/ ' The ruthless slaughter in the 
Eoman arena called forth no protest. The uncov- 
ered vileness of sin caused men to realize its ter- 
rible reality. 

But in our more protected and ordered society 
we are not so sure of its reality. We are warned 
by some of the most careful students of our modern 
life that the sense of sin is on the decline. Prof. 
James H. Snowden suggests the following reasons 
for this. 

First, there has been an abatement in the gen- 
eral sense of fear of the supernatural. Second, 
there has been a decided reaction against extreme 
views of hell and punishment for sin. Third, our 
views of the character of God have changed. Ser- 
mons like Jonathan Edwards' "Sinners In the 
Hands of An Angry God" are no longer preached. 
Fourth, our views of sin itself have changed. "Any 
pantheistic or deterministic theory of the world 
cuts up sin by the roots and reduces it to pure 
mechanism and necessity, so that it is no more 
a guilty choice and act than the growth of grass 
or the fall of a stone, and such views have been 
popularized in much of our literature." Another 
very real cause for the declining sense of sin, and 
one the results of which are well stated by Eichard 
Roberts, is the pressure of the evolution hypothesis 



The Reality of Sin 49 

as it has been misinterpreted. "'From the doctrine 
of evolution we inferred a doctrine of fated prog- 
ress and of inherent human perfectibility; and out 
of this material we drew a picture of a universe 
rolling steadily up a gently inclined plane to the 
city of God. Under the spell of the prosperity and 
the general ease of life in our generation, we lulled 
ourselves into the belief that this old world of ours 
was pressing with an irresistible momentun to some 
1 far-off divine event ', and that our human delin- 
quencies were no more than untoward little acci- 
dents which do not seriously affect the ultimate 
issue." 

The Reality of Sin 

These conditions have caused us to "deceive 
ourselves" for a day, and have greatly hindered 
our acceptance of the real truth about sin; but 
they have not destroyed its reality. "Sin is still 
a frightful fact in the world. It writes its ruin 
in vice and crime, in individual murder and in the 
colossal convulsions of war, in all human selfish- 
ness and cruelty, trials and tears, sufferings and 
sorrows, broken hearts and lost souls. It is the 
awful tragedy of the universe. Only fools mock 
at it. Angels weep over it, and the Son of God 
gave Himself as a sacrifice to atone for its guilt. 
Its retribution cannot be escaped. Hell cannot 
be dug out of the universe, or its fires be put out. 
God's justice never slumbers nor sleeps. He can- 
not overlook sin and be a respectable God. The 
integrity of the universe cannot tolerate it. God 
will not let it mock Him, and it is still an eternal 
law of life that the wages of sin is death." (Snow- 
den.) 



50 The Evangelistic Message 

Jesus and the Reality of Sin 

"When Jesus began His ministry he did not face 
the world with a theory of sin. He faced the aw- 
ful reality of sin in the multitudes who were in 
His eyes "like sheep without a shepherd ". He 
saw its marks everywhere in human disease that 
appealed to His healing touch. With the fact of 
sin Jesus always associated another fact — that of 
"lost humanity". The men and women Jesus 
looked upon as being lost are living examples for 
all time of the reality of sin. These, according to 
Prof. Glover, Jesus puts into four general classes : 

First, the group who stand out in his famous de- 
scription of the Last Judgment, those who in their 
failure to serve their fellows in the common minis- 
tries of life had missed the mark and lost their 
souls. Second, those warned in the Sermon on the 
Mount, — people whose sin is not murder or adul- 
tery, but merely anger and unclean thought; not 
the people who actually give themselves away like 
the publicans and the harlots, but those who in their 
moral cowardice would like to do the same things 
if they dared. Third, the most notorious group of 
all whom Jesus warned — the Scribes and the Phar- 
isees. Theirs was the sin, which according to 
Jesus was the worst of all sins, that of deliberately 
refusing to receive the light and revelation of 
God. Fourth, the group of people who, because of 
the weakness of their wills, could never decide in 
the face of clear duty. Unable to use their wills, 
these people were the victims of sin in its worst 
forms. Surveying these four groups we see the 
reality of the sin that finally cuts the soul adrift 
from God and reduces it to utter bankruptcy. 



The Reality of Sin 51 

Conclusion 

For the fact of sin in all its terrible reality Chris- 
tianity offers a remedy. For the vilest sinner 
there is forgiveness. If Christians have sinned 
and missed the mark of their high calling the mes- 
sage is, "If we confess our sins, He is willing and 
faithful to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us 
from all unrighteousness.' ' For those without 
Christ as a Saviour the word is plain. "He that 
doeth sin is of the devil, for the devil sinneth from 
the beginning. But to this end w T as the Son of God 
manifested, that He might destroy the works of 
the devil". 

If you feel the burden of sin in your heart there 
is no cure save Jesus. No earthly power can help 
you. You remember how Lady Macbeth inquired 
of her court physician, 

"Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased, 

Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, 

Eaze out the written troubles of the brain, 

And with some sweet oblivious antidote 

Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous grief 

Which weighs upon the heart?" 

There was no human medicine for Lady Macbeth 
and there is none for you. Our salvation is from 
God through Jesus Christ. 



THE REALITY OF SALVATION 

For I am not ashamed of the gospel: for it is the 
power of God unto salvation to everyone that be- 
lieveth * * * — Romans 1:16. 

SALVATION is a large word. How large we 
never knew until we began to read the New 
Testament in the light of modern science and ex- 
perience. In a theological sense the term means 
liberation from the bondage and results of sin; a 
deliverance from sin and eternal death; a redemp- 
tion. In a practical sense it means the act of saving 
or delivering from destruction or calamity. Three 
facts about salvation stand out prominently in the 
New Testament. First, it is of God and it is His 
power (Romans 1:16). Second, it is contained in 
the gospel and its author is Jesus Christ (Romans 
1:16; Hebrews 5:8-9). Third, there is no other way 
of receiving God's salvation but through His gospel 
and His Son (Acts 4:12). Salvation is, then, simply 
Jesus Christ and His gospel — the divine man and 
His message. 

Is this salvation of God which is embodied in 
Jesus and His Gospel a reality? Applying the test 
of pragmatism, have they worked? Has Jesus and 
His gospel been a saving power in human society? 
Jesus held that "the practical virtue of any system 
of faith lay in its effects on conduct." "By their 
fruits ye shall know them" was one of His earliest 
sayings. Speaking to His Disciples near the close 
of His ministry He showed His willingness to submit 
to this same test. "Believe Me that I am in the 
Father, and the Father in Me ; or else believe Me for 
the very work's sake." Let us measure Jesus and 
His gospel with His own measuring stick. 

52 



The Reality of Salvation 53 

The Gospel a Saving Power 

Has the gospel been a saving power in the world? 
In one of His first public utterances Jesus made 
certain definite promises as to what His gospel 
would do. "The spirit of the Lord is upon Me be- 
cause He hath anointed Me to preach the gospel to 
the poor ; He hath sent Me to heal the broken-hearted, 
to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering 
of the sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that 
are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the 
Lord." 

Has the gospel accomplished or even partly ac- 
complished these things? Are the poor any better 
off in Christian America than they were in pagan 
Rome? Do the broken-hearted find any greater 
comfort since Jesus said, "I am the resurrection 
and the life" and Paul sang his wonder-hymn, 
"0 death, where is thy sting? grave, where is 
thy victory ? ' ' Has the lot of the captive been made 
easier under the practices of a Christian civilization? 
Are the blind better cared for, the bruised and suf- 
fering any happier, and has the acceptable year of 
the Lord been preached to all nations? We cannot 
answer these questions in detail, but a few observa- 
tions will help. 

A few years ago Dr. Mason W. Clark of Brooklyn 
used this striking illustration of the difference be- 
tween a pagan and Christian society: "If you were 
to bring from the grave some old inhabitant of Pom- 
peii and show him the dark side of New York, he 
would look wearily up into your face and tell you 
that they did all these things in his day only perhaps 
a little more heartily and vivaciously than we do now. 
If you were to call up some ancient Babylonian and 
lead him through these scenes of vice and shame, he 



54 The Euang Message 

old assure you that it is all old to him. and not 
half so interesting as it was in the open life of 
Babylon. But suppose you were to call up an old 
Pompeiian sinner and a debauched citizen of ancient 
Babylon and show them the Christian side of our 
modern life, take them to one of our hospitals for in- 
stance. How their eyes would brighten. 'We never saw 
this in Pompeii or Babylon. This is truly interesting. 
Who ever heard of such a thing as this V Take them 
St. Christopher's a home for children) and 
imagine their amazement. 'Why do you care for 
sick children like this? We used to let them die. 
or throw them out in the woods to perish of ex- 
pire. This is really interesting.' Take them to 
the society for the prevention of cruelty to chil- 
dren. * * * Take them to our Christian houses 
for the poor and afflicted and despairing, and watch 
their expressions. 'Why. this is something new. 
"We never had these things in our day.' " 

When the Chinese Commissioners visited Chicago 
some years ago they were shown the sights of the 
city by a committee. Asked what interested him 
most, one of the leaders replied. "The Hospitals, 
The Hull House, and the Young Men's Christian 
Association." These interested him most because 
they were most unlike any of the fruits of his own 
civilization. It is the commonplaces of a Christian 
civilization, fruits of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, 
which interest the non-Christian world most. 

Jesus Christ a Saving Power 

Has Jesus Christ Himself been a saving power in 
the lives of men? Can He save men today? "When 
a man has fallen from innocence, when the pilgrim 
has become the prodigal, and the fighter the de- 



The Reality of Salvation 55 

feated," can Jesus restore his manhood and impel 
him toward righteousness? 

A most vivid story of the power of Jesus in saving 
men is told in "The Varieties of Religious Experi- 
ence" by William James, and in "Twice Born 
Men" by Harold Begbie. The life stories of Jerry 
McAuley, and S. H. Hadley, and John B. Gough, 
and Harry Monroe, and Mell Trotter, are records of 
the marvelous saving power of Jesus Christ in the 
experience of individuals. A most unusual story 
of conversion is to be found in John Masefi eld's 
"The Everlasting Mercy." "It is the story of a 
conversion — not the interesting conversion of some 
cultured agnostic, but the sensational, catastrophic 
conversion of a village wastrel, a drunkard, poacher, 
bully, and libertine. It is the drama of a great 
spiritual conquest, not only a vivid poem, but a 
psychological document of surpassing interest." 

Jesus is a Saviour of men. ' ' There are millions of 
Christians in the world, men of every temperament, 
of every age, of every race, of every social condition, 
who, with one voice are ready to testify that Jesus 
has been their Saviour; that He has drawn them to 
Himself, has given them moral victory, has led them 
into communion with the Father, has given unity 
to their lives, has furnished them a new and in- 
finitely worthy motive and purpose, has filled them 
with a love for their fellows, has inspired in them 
the ideals of a new humanity in a new society, and 
has put in their hearts faith to overcome the world." 

Conclusion 

An atheist once asked an Oriental how he knew 
there was a God. The man answered by inquiring, 
"How do I know whether it was a man or a camel 



56 The Evangelistic Message 

that passed my tent last night?' ' He knew by the 
footprints in the sand. Pointing the atheist to the 
beauties of the setting sun he asked, "Whose foot- 
print is that?" 

How do we know that salvation is real? We 
know from these footprints all around us. We offer 
this gospel to men today with just as much con- 
fidence as Paul offered it to the Romans. In the 
intervening centuries it has been tested, and has 
stood the test. We are not ashamed of the gospel, 
for in the light of what it has done in the world and 
in the lives of men, we know that it is "the power 
of God unto salvation." 






"HE PINDETH FIRST HIS OWN BROTHER" 

He findeth first his own brother Simon * * * 
He brought him unto Jesus. — John 1 :41, 42. 

IN the opening pages of the Old Testament, we 
have presented two brothers, Cain and Abel; in 
like manner the New Testament opens with a pic- 
ture of two brothers. But here the likeness ends. 
Cain hated Abel, and murder was the logical result. 
Andrew loved his brother Simon, and salvation was 
the outcome. Out of the heart are the issues of life. 
The spirit and the purpose of the heart irrevocably 
determine our actions. 

Andrev/s Great Teacher 

John the Baptist was Andrew's first teacher. He 
magnified not himself, but the coming Christ. Many 
teachers and preachers, it has been said, have just 
light enough to attract attention to themselves, as 
the moon ; while others are like the sun, which draws 
attention away from itself to the landscape. John 
taught his disciples to think about Christ. When 
He came they were ready to receive Him. John 
was not ashamed to decrease while He increased. 
He was for the cause of righteousness, not himself ; 
and if Jesus could more successfully establish this 
cause than he could, why should He not be pre- 
ferred? In this, John showed his real greatness, 
and Andrew caught his spirit. 

"John, than which man a greater or a sadder 
Not till this day has been of woman born ; 

John, like some lonely peak of the Creator 

Fired with the red glow of the rushing morn." 

57 



58 The Evangelistic Message 

Andrew Among the Twelve 

Andrew seems to have held an inconspicuous place 
among the twelve. He is represented (Mark 13:3) 
as one of the inner circle with the twelve, for he is 
one of the four who questioned Christ "privately.*' 
Then he was the one who had knowledge of the lad 
with "five barley loaves and two fishes." Once 
more, when the Greeks expressed a "desire to see 
Jesus" it is to Andrew first that Philip reports the 
request, and they both lay the matter before Jesus. 
He seems to have preached no great sermon like 
Peter, nor to have undertaken any great missionary 
task like Paul^ but to have busied himself with 
the smaller and less conspicuous duties of life, such 
as noticing boys and introducing people to Jesus. 
After all, there can be only a few outstanding men 
in the kingdom of God. The others must be content 
with less conspicuous service. Indeed there would 
be no notable ones, but for the lesser ones; just as 
there would be no Niagara, but for the number 
of small springs that feed the great lakes which 
pour out their waters over the mighty precipice; 
no Mississippi, but for the many small tributaries that 
make the mighty river. A continent needs no more 
than one Niagara, it has been said, and one great 
river is sufficient to drain its wide extended plains. 
One Beecher suffices for a generation; but the need 
for those who do personal work, attend to the small 
social affairs of life, those who have time to be 
friends of the little children, is always pressing. 
Andrew attended to these things. 

Taking Time to Notice the Boy 

How did this apostle, the intimate of Jesus, know 
that a lad had just so many barley loaves and fishes? 



"He Findeth First His Own Brother" 59 

Perhaps Andrew lifted him up in his arms, or stood 
him on an old tree trunk or a rock, that he might 
get a better view of the Master. This would have 
won the boy's friendship, and he would have told 
Andrew in turn all about the lunch that his mother 
had prepared for him. We know not what became 
of that boy; but it is certain that he never lost the 
vividness of that scene, nor forgot his friend. Boys 
need encouragement. A word spoken to them in 
season how good it is. Prof. Hopwood, while the 
train halted at a station in Virginia, saw a boy 
standing by. He walked up to him, and laying his 
hand on his head, said, "When you get ready to go 
to college, come to Milligan, Tenn." That boy did 
get ready for college, and went to Milligan. He has 
been an honored teacher in the public schools of his 
native State for many years. He went to that par- 
ticular college because its president had spoken 
kindly, encouragingly, to him, and at the right time. 

Beginning With One's Own Kin 

It is certainly a mark of earnestness when one can 
urge religion upon his own kindred, members of his 
own household. This Andrew did. He first found 
his own brother Simon, and brought him to Jesus. 
Many years ago Mr. Moody was preparing for a 
great religious campaign in Louisville, Ky. While 
the workmen were still busy constructing the tab- 
ernacle, this text, "He findeth first his own brother 
Simon/ ' in large letters was hung up in a conspic- 
uous place. One of the workmen saw it. He re- 
membered that he had a brother, and, strange coin- 
cidence, his name was Simon. This brother was not 
a Christian. He had never spoken to him about be- 
coming one. How would he approach him? He 



60 The Evangelistic Message 

prayed; yea, he wrestled in prayer. So, early one 
morning he called on his brother, who expressed 
surprise at seeing him at such an hour. He told him 
his mission as best he could. The brother had not 
expected that kind of interest. But he was aroused. 
It w r as now the turn of Simon to wrestle and pray. 
He became a Christian. 

Andrew brought Peter to Jesus. Jesus saw at 
once that he had made a "find." Here was a man 
who would become great in the kingdom of God 
and turn many to righteousness. As the result of 
Peter's sermon on Pentecost, some three thousand 
were converted. They were Andrew's converts. He 
had converted the preacher. He was not much of 
a preacher himself, but he could convert men who 
could preach. 

Persona! Effort in Soul-Winning 

The preachers who stand in the pulpit do mar- 
velously well in bringing home the message of 
Christ; but their message is largely to those who 
have been supposedly converted. The alien sinners 
are not there. They must be visited. Christ must 
often be offered to them in a personal way. The 
preacher is only one man. The congregation must 
take up his message on Sunday and multiply it dur- 
ing the week. Someone felicitated Dr. Lyman 
Beecher upon his great success in Boston. He re- 
plied that it was simple. His four hundred members 
took up the message that he gave them on Sunday 
and scattered it abroad during the week. Sam John- 
son is said not to have liked Wesley. He had no 
time to talk. When the talk was just getting in- 
teresting he would run off to see some old woman 
who was in want. How can we stay in one place 



"He Findeth First His Oivn Brother" 61 

long when there is so much to do and the time so 
short in which to do it? 

"Winning Men One by One" was the title of a 
book put out a few years ago. It is certainly a 
Scriptural method. It is the old way. Every re- 
newal of evangelical zeal, however, discovers it 
afresh. It is just as necessary to be concrete in 
winning men for Christ as it is in making our way in 
business. In gunpowder the finer the grain the 
greater the explosive force. Henry Ward Beecher 
said: "The longer I live the more confidence I am 
coming to have in those sermons where one man is 
the minister and one the congregation, and there is 
no doubt as to who is meant." Joel Stratton laid 
his hand on the shoulder of John B. G-ough, a drunk- 
ard in the gutter, and said to him: "Man, there is 
a better life for you than this." That exhortation 
went home. John B. Gough was redeemed. John 
Eaglen enabled young Spurgeon to see the Lamb 
of God, and that was a greater work than feeding 
a multitude. 

Winning the World in This Generation 

It is possible ; not probable. It is possible through 
personal evangelism; not so in any other way. "The 
salvation of the individual culminates in the salva- 
tion of the race, the salvation of the race involves 
the salvation of the individual," said Bernard Lucas 
in The Empire of Christ. The delay in the King- 
dom's coming is not from God. Says Professor A. 
G. Hogg: "A Father-God must be always ready to 
usher in the * Kingdom/ always willing to put forth 
His infinite resources for the rescue of His children 
from evil powers too strong for them. If he does 
not it must be that He is hindered; and nothing 



62 The Evangelistic Message 

can hinder a Father-God from being fully Himself 
to His children, but their distrust and self-willed 
independence which distrust engenders * # * 
'The mills of God' have ground slowly only because 
He chooses to wait for man * * * Let there be 
born an implicit trust and its twin-brother, the sur- 
render of self-will, and at once that limited slow- 
working Providence which had been so much the 
rule as to seem a fixed order of nature would prove 
its unnaturalness by giving place to a new system 
of nature, an unrestrained exercise of God's infinite 
resources on the side of all that is good in man and 
good for man. So, and only so, would the Kingdom 
of God arrive; its time was whenever men learned 
faith." 

If the individual church members could be made 
winners of souls, the world could be converted in 
this generation. This is the way A. F. Schauffler 
puts it: "If every disciple today were to call only 
one other person to Christ in each year, and that one 
were to call one other, how swiftly the world would 
be wholly converted ! There are today millions of 
true believers in the world. But if there were only 
one hundred, see how quickly the work would 
grow. In less than twenty-five years the world would 
be converted, for this would double the number of 
disciples each year. First year, 100; second year, 
200; third year, 400; fourth year, 800; fifth year, 
1,600; sixth year, 3,200; seventh year, 6,400; eighth 
year, 12,800; ninth year, 25,600; tenth year, 51,200; 
(Well,' says someone, just here, 'that is rather 
slow progress, only 51,200 in ten whole years.' Go 
on, however, ten years more, and see how your num- 
bers will look then); eleventh year, 102,400; twelfth 
year, 204,800; thirteenth year, 409,600; fourteenth 



"He Findeth First His Own Brother" 63 

year, 817,200; fifteenth year, 1,634,400; sixteenth 
year, 3,268,800; seventeenth year, 6,537,600 (it's 
growing now) ; eighteenth year, 13,075,200; nine- 
teenth year, 26,150,400; twentieth year, 53,300,800; 
twenty-first year, 104,601, 600; twenty-second year, 
over 209,000,000; twenty-third year, over 418,000,- 
000; twenty-fourth year, over 826,000,000; and in 
the twenty-fifth year, over 1,600,000,000, or more 
than the population of the whole earth. This shows 
the power of ' ones' multiplied." 

To accomplish this stupendous but glorious task, 
each Christian should begin right where he is. Speak 
of Christ to the man next to him. A man came 
to Mr. Spurgeon and asked for some church work. 
"What is your trade?" asked the preacher. "An 
engine driver," was the reply. "Is the stoker a 
Christian?" "No." "Very well, then," said Mr. 
Spurgeon, "there's your church work!" 



THE LURE OF THE IMAGINATION 

# * * ever y m an in Ms chambers of imagery. — 
Ezek. 8:12. 

THESE words are lifted out of an interesting 
chapter. Jehovah is showing the prophet the 
abominations of Israel. Through an open door he 
is led into a place where the vilest sort of idolatry 
is being indulged. The message is this: that what 
these men are doing in the dark, thinking God does 
not see them, every man is in danger of doing in 
the chambers of his own imagination. 

"It is in the chamber of imagery that our real 
life is lived, for what we desire, that we seek; what 
we covet, that we pursue ; what we think, that we 
are * * # Q ur chamber of imagery is not built 
with hands, it is within ourselves. It is painted 
with no colors of human art; our thoughts are the 
artists, and our fancies are the things they paint. 
There is an inner life which we all live, so closely 
hidden from the world, that those who know us best, 
little suspect its nature and character. There is a 
secret chamber of the mind, the chamber of our 
imagination, where we live a life to which the world 
holds no clue. Our real life is the life of our thought, 
our hope, our desire. And our thoughts are forever 
painting for us pictures which allure and delight us, 
and perhaps disgrace and debase us." (W. J. 
Dawson.) 

The Power of the Imagination 

It would be difficult to overestimate the power 
of the imagination in the life of the race. It has 
been the inner source of locomotion that has lured 

64 



The Litre of Imagination 65 

humanity upward and onward toward its ultimate 
goal. Every Utopia has been the creation of some 
imagination. 

In religion the imagination has been the vehicle 
through which God has revealed Himself to man. 
Horace Bushnell says, "The gift of God in the Holy 
Scriptures, is a gift to the imagination." William 
Elliot Griffin writes, "In a word, imagination as 
the vehicle of divine truth dominates the Book of 
Books." 

In all types of literature the power of the imagi- 
nation has been supreme. "Strip the race of imagi- 
nation and every poet would be ' mute inglorious. ' The 
novelist needs this breath to give life to his charac- 
ters, for no writer can image to you what he himself 
has not seen. The historian may collate his facts 
encyclopedically ; but if he is wanting in imaginative 
power, he cannot clothe the dry bones with flesh and 
send the blood coursing through the veins." 

In science, where men are supposed to deal only 
in cold, hard facts, the imagination has played its 
part. It was the lure of the imagination that led 
Copernicus, Kepler, Bacon, Faraday, Darwin, Edi- 
son, and Marconi far from the harbors of the par- 
tially known, out upon the seas of the unknown, to 
come back with their ships laden with precious 
treasures for mankind. And this same lure has sent 
all of the world's great explorers and discoverers 
out to win new continents. 

Someone has well said that "the imagination is 
integral with life. Its hand is on the throttle of 
all human progress; it cradles every invention and 
maps the route of every social, economic, and intel- 
lectual advance ; it steeps the brush of the artist and 
beats the measure for the poet; it brushes the dust 



66 The Evangelistic Message 

from the pages of history and is a telescope for the 
culture of civilizations long since passed away. It 
is coextensive with very existence, for all men in all 
times have molded their life and thought in its in- 
finite forms. " 

A Corrupt Imagination 

But this power through which man has received 
the revelation of God, which has been the inspira- 
tion of all the arts and sciences, which has led man 
upward to the heights of achievement in every 
realm, has also led him down to the very doors of 
hell. The lure of a healthy imagination is as the 
breath of life ; but the lure of a corrupt imagination 
leadeth to destruction. Like the other great facul- 
ties of our makeup the imagination is extremely 
sensitive, and it is here that sin most often makes 
its first attack. We are told of a noted painter who 
said, "he never dared to look upon a bad picture, 
because for days afterwards it influenced him so 
powerfully that he could not paint well." 

The imagination can be corrupted, and the lure of 
a corrupt imagination is one of the most dangerous 
enemies of the soul. Many, if not all, of our great- 
est sins, are sins of the imagination. Covetousness, 
lust, and what Paul calls a reprobate or darkened 
mind, are all sins of the imagination. The last of 
the ten commandments warns against covetousness. 
Jesus also warns against it (Luke 12:15). Both 
Jesus and James utter warnings against the sin and 
results of lust (Matt. 5 :27-29 ; James 1 :14, 15). The 
results, and consequences in life, of lust and a rep- 
robate and darkened mind, are vividly set forth by 
Paul in Komans 1:21-32. 

The Bible abounds in stories of lives that have 



The Lure of Imagination 67 

been led to destruction, or to its verge, by the lure 
of a corrupt imagination. The story of Lot; the 
story of David; and the story of Judas, are splen- 
did examples. Lot dreamed of influence, power, 
and a high life in a great city. His dream brought 
him to ruin. David dreamed of a beautiful woman 
who was the wife of another man. His dream 
brought tragedy and disgrace to his own family 
and nearly wrecked his kingdom. Judas . dreamed 
of a worldly kingdom in which he should have a 
place of power and influence, and his dream be- 
trayed the Christ and brought his own career to a 
tragic end. The story of the prodigal, and tens of 
thousands like him, is that of the lure of a corrupt 
imagination. 

Conclusion 

In a sermon on our text Alexander Maclaren sug- 
gests one of the hidden warnings in the incident 
from which it is taken. "Apparently the picture 
suggests that these elders knew not the eyes that 
were looking upon them. They were hugging them- 
selves in the conceit, 'The Lord seeth not, the Lord 
hath forsaken the earth/ and all the while, all un- 
known, God and his prophet stand in the doorway 
and see it all. Not a finger is lifted, not a sign to the 
foolish worshiper of His presence and inspection, 
but in stern silence He records and remembers." 
There is one who knows what we have painted on 
the walls of our chambers of imagery. 

The story is told of a mother's visit to her son's 
room in his fraternity house in college. The boy 
did not know she was coming and did not know that 
she had been in his room. She had found the walls 
covered with vile and obscene pictures. Before 



68 The Evangelistic Message 

leaving for home she again stole into his room with- 
out his knowledge and hung upon the wall a picture 
of the Christ. The boy was angry when he first 
discovered it. But as he began to study that pure, 
manly face, one by one the vile and obscene pictures 
began to come down, and only those which were in 
keeping with the picture of Christ remained. 

The only way to cleanse a corrupted imagination 
is to paint upon its walls pure and lovely pictures. 
And God who watches in secret, and knows what we 
have thought and painted, has His own way of sav- 
ing us. He steals into our chambers of imagery as 
quietly as a mother and in different ways hangs 
there the picture of His Son — the Son of His love, 
Whom He gave to the world — knowing that when 
men look upon His face they will see the Face of a 
Father in Whose presence those vile things which 
corrupt the imagination and lure to destruction, 
cannot continue to live. 



THE FAR COUNTRY 

And # * * gathered all together and took his 
journey into a far country * * * — Luke 15:13. 

IS a new sermon on the story of the prodigal pos- 
sible? If it were, it would be unnecessary, for 
the old story is still new, and its essential message 
can never be changed. This, however, is not a ser- 
mon about the prodigal, but about a vast multitude 
of modern folk whose picture is clearly and accu- 
rately drawn in the story of his life. Leaving aside 
the general interpretation of the parable we turn 
our attention to just one expression, that which de- 
scribes the young man taking his possessions and 
starting into the far country. 

This was not all of the prodigal's sin. But it was 
the beginning. So far as we can gather from the 
events of the story he had lived, up to the time of 
his departure, an industrious and blameless life. 
Under the protecting roof of his father's house he 
had done his share of the work necessary to gain 
certain possessions. He had a perfect right to a 
part of the possessions he had helped to gain. The 
father never raised any question on that point. His 
sin does not lie in the fact that he had possessions, 
but in the fact that having gained them under the 
protection of his father's house, he takes them for 
himself, and turns his back upon his father and 
home. This was the beginning of his trouble. Go- 
ing into the far country was the beginning of the 
end for this boy. 

Respectable Backsliders 

Thousands all around us have done just what this 
boy did. Under the protection and influence of the 

69 



70 The Evangelistic Message 

church of Jesus Christ, and through the practice of 
the Christian virtues, they have helped to create 
certain possessions. But when they have become 
wealthy in power, influence, money or intellectual 
achievement, they have gathered together their pos- 
sessions and have taken a journey into the far coun- 
try. They have deliberately turned their backs upon 
the church, which has been one of the biggest, if not 
the supreme factor in their success. These people 
are respectable backsliders. The church has helped 
them to win their present position in life — and in 
the hour of victory it has been forgotten. It has 
given them business success, it has given them train- 
ing, it has saved their children, it has guarded them 
from those deadly sins which keep so many people 
from the enjoyment of possessions after they are 
gained — and yet it is no longer worthy of their time 
and thought and support. These are the citizens of 
the far country, and we could call many of them by 
name in every community. 

"There is No Difference'' 

If we dared to class these good people with those 
men and women who have left the church to sink 
into the vilest of sins, they would be highly insulted. 
But there is no difference in the ultimate results. 
The man who is in the far country of respectable 
ease and indifference, and heeds not the appeals of 
the church, is just as far away from God as the man 
who is in the far country of the lowest vice and sin. 
The man whose soul has been drugged by little or 
great possessions will stand before God in the judg- 
ment, on the same level with the man whose soul 
has been drugged through the practice of the lowest 
sin. "For there is no difference ; for all have sinned 



The Far Country 71 

and fallen short of the glory of- God" (Romans 3: 

22,23). 

Perils of the Far Country 

The far country is full of perils for its residents. 
They are the perils common to the backslider. No- 
where in the Bible are they more clearly pictured, 
or the characteristics of the backslider more dis- 
tinctly outlined than in the little prophecy of Hosea. 
Read it and you will be struck with the following 
expressions concerning the backslider : 

"Ephraim shall be desolate in the day of rebuke" 
(5:8). "Ephraim is oppressed and broken in judg- 
ment" (5:11). "They commit falsehood * # * 
Ephraim compasseth me about with lies" (11:12). 
"For Israel hath forgotten his Maker and builded 
palaces * * * " (8:14). "Ephraim feedeth on 
wind and followeth after the east wind" (12:1). 
"And Ephraim said, Surely I am become rich, I 
have found me wealth; in all my labors they shall 
find in me no iniquity that is sin" (12:8). "When 
Ephraim spake trembling, he exalted himself" 
(13:1). "Ephraim is smitten; their root is dried 
up, they shall bear no more fruit" (9:16). 

The residents of the far country are stricken with 
a certain hardening of the heart which causes them 
to be unaware of their real danger. They do not 
feel themselves to be great sinners. Because they 
have gained possessions they are God's privileged 
characters. They have reached the stage in their 
spiritual development when church attendance and 
the emblems of the Lord's Supper have little to do 
with their perfection. They do not need these com- 
mon helps. Jeremiah says of them, "No man re- 
pents of his wickedness, saying, What have I done?" 



72 The Evangelistic Message 

In the end the residents of, the far country are 
always reduced to want. It may not always be the 
want of material things — such as came to the prodi- 
gal — but it is want just the same. It is most often the 
want of the hunger of the unsatisfied soul. This is 
a hunger all the possessions in the world cannot 
satisfy. Sooner or later, and sometimes almost too 
late, the soul that has known what it means to be 
in the "Father's House," will be hungry for that 
bread which is served only at the "Father's table." 

Conclusion 

What would happen to the church if all those 
splendid men and women who have taken their pos- 
sessions and gone into the far country, would de- 
cide to come back home? What would happen if 
all those who received the beginning of their educa- 
tion, or who have completed that education in the 
church schools and colleges, would come back to 
throw the wealth of their knowledge and achieve- 
ment into the life of the church? What would hap- 
pen if that great host of sweet singers who received 
their first training in a church choir would come 
back to flood the sanctuary with their songs? What 
would happen if the thousands of mothers and 
fathers, who received the ideals which have made 
their lives true, in the church, would come back 
and bring with them their unchurched children? 
What would happen if all the men who have made 
money under the influence and protection of the 
church would pour out even one-tenth of their treas- 
ure before the altar of God? The human soul has 
always recoiled in the presence of base ingratitude. 
Could there be any baser ingratitude than this con- 
secration to self of the possessions which God has 



The Far Country 73 

made possible? Sincere gratitude honestly ex- 
pressed has always melted the heart of humanity. 
What would happen to the heart of the world, that 
world that has been coldly critical of the church 
because of the ingratitude of those in the far coun- 
try, if it should witness them returning to give God 
and the church their honest dues? If all the non- 
active and non-affiliated members of the church in 
every community should decide to return from the 
far country, the walls of all our churches would 
be literally pushed out. 

And the way back is always open. In the first 
eight verses of the 14th chapter of Hosea we have 
God's gracious invitation to the backslider. In the 
prodigal returning to the Father's house we have a 
picture of the way God receives those who return 
from the far country. Some of the saddest words on 
the pages of Scripture were uttered by Jeremiah 
after his people had refused to return to Jehovah. 
In them we have the final sentence, which both God 
and the laws of the human soul, pass upon those 
who decide to remain in the far country, "The har- 
vest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not 
saved.' ' 



THE HEART OP THE FATHER 

* * * God so loved * * *— John 3:16. 

JESUS CHRIST expressed the essence of His reli- 
gion in one all-embracing word, "Father." This 
was His conception of God. Only a few voices in 
the long religious history of the race have ever 
conceived of God in terms of Fatherhood. (Jer. 
3:19; Isaiah 63:16; 64:8; Psalm 103:13.) Jesus ac- 
cording to Prof. Kent, "gave to the word, father, a 
reality and a personal content that made His teach- 
ing a new message to men. * * * The foundation of 
Jesus' teaching about God # * * was the possibility 
of man's entering into personal relations with his di- 
vine Father * * * Jesus placed supreme emphasis 
upon the love of God, for this quality was funda- 
mental and largely overlooked by the teachers of 
His day." Jesus not only reveals the Father-God 
of this universe, but reveals His heart also. "God 
so loved * * * The Father Himself loveth you 
* * * " And the disciple who reported most of 
Jesus' words concerning the love of God, sums it 
all up by saying, "God is love." After living with 
the human Jesus and after years in the service of 
the Risen Christ, this is his verdict. 

The supreme need of the w r orld is to know the 
heart of this Father-God. Jesus declared, "This is 
eternal life that they might know God • * * " 
Without a knowledge of God there is no eternal life. 
In the presence of this fact we ask how this knowl- 
edge can be attained. The New Testament has not 
left the question unanswered. It suggests two su- 
preme ways of knowing this Father whose heart is 
love. 



74 






The Heart of the Father 75 

"I Am the Way" 

The first way of approach to the heart of the 
Father, to a knowledge of this God who is love, is 
through Jesus Christ. In answer to the questioning 
soul of a man who wanted to know the Father, Jesus 
said, "I am the way * * # No man cometh unto 
the Father except by Me. If ye had known Me 
ye would have known My Father also." Another 
anxious soul said, "Lord, show us the Father/' And 
Jesus answered, "He that hath seen Me hath seen 
the Father." And men who have taken Jesus at 
His word have not been disappointed. 

R. J. Campbell says: "When you have seen the 
heart of Jesus you have no more to learn about 
the heart of God: it will be the same as His to all 
eternity." Sabatier says: "When wearied by the 
world of pleasure or toil, I long to find my soul again 
and live a deeper life, I can accept no other God and 
Master than Jesus Christ, because in Him alone 
optimism is without frivolity and seriousness with- 
out despair." Dr. Fairbairn has said, "Since Jesus 
lived, God has been another and nearer being to 
man," and D. S. Cairns voices the conviction "that 
the mightiest driving impulse of Christianity is not 
Christ's revelation of the possibilities of humanity, 
but his revelation of the essential nature of Almighty 
God, of his kinship with mankind, and of His pur- 
pose of redeeming love." 

"The real crux comes," says Prof. Glover, "when 
the question arises in a man's own heart, 'Does God 
love me ? ' Jesus says that he does, but it is very hard 
to believe, except in the company of Jesus and under 
His influence # * # The central thing it seems 
to me in His teaching about God is, that God cares 



76 The Evangelistic Message 

for the individual to an extent far beyond anything 
we could think possible. If Ave can wrestle with 
that central thought and assimilate it, or as the old 
divines said, appropriate it, make it our own, the 
rest of the gospel is easy. But one can never manage 
it except with the help, and in the company of 
Jesus." 

"He That Loveth" 

The second way of approach to the heart of the 
Father is the exercise of love in the human heart. 
The same disciple who said, "God is love" said in 
the beginning of the same sentence, "He that loveth 
not knoweth not God." This is the negative side of 
the proposition, "He that loveth knoweth God." 
This same man, John, goes on to say: "If a man 
say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar; 
for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath 
seen, cannot love God whom he hath not seen." 
James says: "But whoso hath this world's goods 
and beholdeth his brother in need, and shutteth up 
his compassion for him, how doth the love of God 
abide in him?" 

Only as we come to love our brother men, the 
most wretched and needy of them, do we find that 
love without which it is impossible to know God. 
All our intellectual achievement, our profession and 
our formality, is but an empty mockery, unless Ave 
have loved our fellows! And Avhat an opportunity 
there is all about us to find God through love ! Oh 
ye who have been searching in creed and dogma, 
open your heart to the cries of millions of your fel- 
low-beings whose lives are going out in misery, star- 
A^ation and sin; share Avith them the money that is 






The Heart of the Father 77 

eating like a canker into your own soul, and lo, in 
this impulse of unselfish love you will see your 
Father in heaven! 

Conclusion 

This is the knowledge of God that means eternal 
life. To see His face and feel the throb of His 
loving heart in a great Personality like Jesus, and 
to discover through the exercise of the passion of 
love in our own hearts the Divine in the human. 
This is a practical knowledge of God and a way into 
His presence which all men can travel if they will. 

The atheism that drives men away from the church 
today and causes them to ignore God is a practical 
atheism. Men are not denying God with their heads. 
They are not producing intellectual arguments 
against God. They are denying God in their wicked 
hearts and godless lives. It is not the head but the 
heart that is leading most men astray. 

If this be true, an intellectual argument will never 
win them back. We must appeal to the heart as 
well as the head. Emotionalism or not, call it what 
you please ; the fact remains that the stubborn hearts 
of men must be melted by a great love before this 
practical atheism will depart. They will more surely 
find the way to God through such a Personality as 
the Jesus of the Gospels, and through the practice 
of unselfish love toward their fellows. When we 
make it possible for Jesus to break through the 
walls which theology has built around Him, and let 
men see Him for what he really is, He will draw all 
men unto Himself. And when we inspire men to 
open their hearts to really love and serve their fel- 
lows, we will have brought the world a long ways 
toward God. 



78 The Evangelistic Message 

We seem so far away from God that it looks like an 
impossible ideal to say we may know Him. And 
what has been said is perhaps true, that "no one 
will ever be entirely satisfied with his attainments 
in his outreach for God." But as Edwin Markham 
has expressed it in one of his poems, we can all 
begin. 

"The builder who first bridged Niagara's gorge, 
Before he swung his cable, shore to shore, 
Sent out across the gulf his venturing kite 
Bearing an unseen cord for unseen hands 
To grasp upon the further cliff and draw 
A greater cord, and then a greater yet: 
Till at last across the chasm swung 
The cable — then the mighty bridge in air! 

"So we may send our little timid thought 
Across the void, out to God's reaching hands — 
Send out our love and faith to thread the deep — 
Thought after thought until the little cord 
Has greatened to a chain no chance can break, 
And, we are anchored to the Infinite!" 

Are we anchored to the Infinite? Do we know 
God and His great Father heart in an intimate 
way? If not, let us hear the words of Jesus, "I 
am the way," and the call of a world that needs 
our love, and begin to come into that knowledge. 



THE ONLY ESCAPE 

* * * how shall we escape, if we neglect so great 
a salvation? — Hebrews 2:3. 

THE key word to Hebrews is "better." Better 
promises, better sacrifice, better Mediator, bet- 
ter spirit, better salvation, and better rewards. 

Greatness of the Salvation Through Christ 

The word of Christ is greater than that of angels. 
His own sacrifice, which was voluntary, and with his 
whole heart, affected psychological conditions in a 
way that conld not be done through the sacrifice of 
animals. His priesthood was perpetual — after the 
order of Melchizedek — hence an eternal Mediator, 
Intercessor, at the right hand of God, for the salva- 
tion of those whose nature he bore. The salvation 
of the old covenant was principally geographical, 
physical, material. Its punishments and rewards 
were largely temporal. The salvation offered by 
Christ in the terms of the new covenant is mental, 
inward, of the heart, and has to do with the rescue 
of the whole personality from the dominion and 
power of sin. It abides. Death has no power over it. 

There is "in strictness but one religion," says Dr. 
A. H. Strong. "False religions are caricatures which 
men give to sin, or the imaginations which men grop- 
ing after light, form of this life of the soul in God." 
"If Christianity be true," says Peabody, "it is 
not a religion, but the religion. If Judaism be also 
true, it is not as distinct from but as coincident 
with Christianity, the one religion to which it can 
bear only the relation of a part to the whole. If 

79 



80 The Evangelistic Message 

there be portions of truth in other religious sys- 
tems, they are not portions of other religions, but 
portions of the one religion which somehow or other 
became incorporated with fables and falsities." 
John Caird said: "You can never get at the true 
idea or essence of religion merely by trying to find 
out something that is common to all religions; and 
it is not the lower religions that explain the higher, 
but conversely the higher religion explains all the 
lower religions.' ' Once more, George P. Fisher 
says: "The recognition of certain elements of truth 
in the ethnic religions does not mean that Christian- 
ity has defects which are to be repaired by borrow- 
ing from them ; it only means that the ethnic faiths 
have in fragments what Christianity has as a whole. 
Comparative religion does not bring to Christianity 
new truth; it provides illustrations of how Christian 
truth meets human needs and aspirations, and gives 
a full vision of that which the most spiritual and 
gifted among the heathen only dimly discern. " 

It follows, then, that there is no way of escape 
except through Christ. He was the embodiment 
and completeness of the true religion. Neither in 
this world, nor the next, is there salvation without 
him. "For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is 
given ; and the government shall be upon his shoul- 
der: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Coun- 
sellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of 
Peace. Of the increase of His government there 
shall be no end' ' (Isa. 9 :6, 7). 

Danger of Neglect 

"It is the neglected wheel that capsizes the vehi- 
cle," says a writer, "and maims for life the passen- 
gers. It is the neglected leak that sinks the ship. It is 



The Only Escape 81 

the neglected field that yields briers instead of bread. 
It is the neglected spark near the magazine whose 
explosion sends hundreds of mangled wretches 
into eternity. The neglect of an officer to throw 
up a rocket on a certain night caused the fall of 
Antwerp, and postponed the deliverance of Holland 
for twenty or more years. The neglect of a sentinel 
to give the alarm hindered the fall of Sebastopol, 
and resulted in the loss of many thousand lives." 
And by sheer neglect a soul may be lost. 

Use or lose is a principle that runs through life, 
both natural and spiritual. A number of illustra- 
tions may be taken from nature. Thus in an ex- 
tinct genus of bird, Dinornis, the wings were reduced 
to such an extent as to leave it still doubtful whether 
so much as the tiny rudiment was present in all the 
species. The Apteryx is another case in point. It 
still exists in New Zealand; but has no wings. The 
naturalist gives this explanation : "Upon this island 
there are no four-footed enemies — either existing or 
extinct — to escape from which the wings of birds 
would be of any service. Consequently we can un- 
derstand why on this island we should meet with 
such a remarkable dwindling away of wings." Here 
we have loss through the lack of stimulus for ac- 
tivity. 

The soul may be lost also through inactivity. It 
has every reason for being active. It is offered the 
greatest boon that can be offered — salvation from all 
soul-destroying forces. But it may be lost by sheer 
neglect of an active existence, and its Godlike po- 
tentialities be withered and blasted forever. The 
soul must be "exercised unto godliness" if it would 
live and flourish in immortal vigor. 



82 The Evangelistic Message 

A Solemn Question 

It is reported that many years ago a Welsh min- 
ister, beginning his sermon, leaned over the pulpit 
and said with much solemnity: "Friends, I have 
a question to ask. I cannot answer it. You cannot 
answer it. If a devil from hell were here he could 
not answer it." The congregation became death- 
like in its stillness. Every eye was fixed upon the 
speaker. He proceeded: "The question is this, 
'How shall we escape, if we neglect so great a sal- 
vation V " Not by money, nor social standing, nor 
political influence, nor knowledge, nor ignorance, 
nor pleasure. There is not now a way of escape, 
nor can there ever be, save through the great salva- 
tion offered by Jesus Christ; "for neither is there 
any other name under heaven, that is given among 
men, wherein we must be saved' ' (Acts 4:12). 

All Roads Closed 

Eecently the Honorable Winston Churchill, a mem- 
ber of the British Cabinet, was on his way to see 
the Prime Minister, when he was accosted by a 
guard. In vain did he argue his case, the guard 
had strict orders to close the approaches to the 
Prime Minister's home. It was necessary for the 
cabinet member to get in touch with his chief by 
telephone; whereupon orders were issued to the 
guards to permit the honorable member to pass to 
and fro at will. And he who would pass into the 
upper realm where Christ is r will find all roads 
closed, all entrances barred, unless he has been able 
to establish a personal relationship with the Son of 
God. 






THE MAN JESUS CALLED A FOOL 

So is he that layeth up treasure for himself and is 
not rich toward God. — Luke 12:21. 

THE parable in which our text is found was 
thrown in as a part of a conversation which 
Jesus had with his disciples concerning covetousness. 
A man out of the multitude had made this request, 
" Teacher, tell my brother to give me my share of 
our inheritance." After telling the man that he 
is no judge in such matters, and warning His dis- 
ciples of the dangers of covetousness, He tells the 
story of the rich man. 

The man Jesus called a fool is not the man men- 
tioned in this parable. It was God who called this 
man a. fool. The man Jesus called a fool is any man, 
every man, who is like "the certain rich man" in 
that he is busy laying up treasure for himself and 
is not rich toward God. Jesus did not speak hastily 
or unadvisedly. He knew what He was say- 
ing. He knew the tendencies and temptations 
of the human soul in the presence of material 
things. He knew the power of selfishness and greed. 
He used strong language only when he thought the 
case demanded it. The word translated fool is a 
strong word. Its literal meaning is, an utterly sense- 
less man. Not in the sense that he has no brains, 
but that he does not use what he has. He was, 
therefore, passing a most severe judgment upon any 
man, who, like the rich man in the parable, has left 
God out of his thinking and plans. Because the 
world is full of just such utterly foolish and sense- 
less people, this parable and the warning of Jesus 
has lost none of its meaning. 

83 



84 The Evangelistic Message 

What is the Matter With the World? 

What is the matter with the world? "It is an 
uncomfortable world — uneasy, distraught; its na- 
tions are in turmoil, its inhabitants distressed by 
class strife and interrupted industry. Their living 
is hard, their necessities costly, their future insecure. 
What is the trouble? Many voices answer. One 
says, the waste of war makes the world poor; its 
stores are depleted; its governments are in debt; 
mankind feels the pinch of want. This is more than 
plausible; we know it is true. Another says, the 
suffering of war has affected the emotional life of 
humanity; society is unbalanced and unstrung; the 
strain and shock of the great conflict was more than 
human nature can stand. This is reasonable. Others 
explain to us that the financing of the war inflated 
currency so as to make prices abnormally large, to 
the hurt of all whose income has not increased pro- 
portionately # * # These are all good reasons. 
But they are superficial. Certain far-reaching and 
deep-seated spiritual defects brought them about. 
The unrest, the economic misery, the social peril, 
cannot be permanently healed unless these spiritual 
defects are removed. " And in this parable of the 
rich man we see clearly outlined the sins which are 
responsible for these defects. 

Three Glaring Sins of Our Age 

Three of the most glaring sins of our age are mir- 
rored in this parable. First, the sin of greed and 
hoarding. Second, the sin of shirking and nonpro- 
duction. Third, the sin of self-indulgence and waste- 
fulness. 

"I will pull down my barns and build greater 
ones." This is the creed of the hoarder. It is the 



The Man Jesus Called a Fool 85 

creed of thousands of old men and young men who 
are after a mint of money, and after it in all kinds 
of ungodly ways. This sin has completely killed 
the souls of thousands of our finest citizens, and 
filled their minds with false ideals. 

"Soul, take thine ease." This is the creed of the 
non-producer. It is the natural sequence of hoard- 
ing. When I have made my stake, when I have 
made a fortune, when my barns are full, when I have 
paid for my farm, then, I iwill become a non-pro- 
ducer. I will let the rest of the world do the work. 
We cannot question the right of a man to make his 
fortune. But we observe that the law which was 
given to the race in the very beginning of its history, 
"that in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat thy 
bread " has never been abrogated. When human 
society reaches a stage in its evolution when one 
class ceases to work and begins to live off of the 
work of another class, it has reached a stage of 
trouble. No man has a right, while his body and 
mind is strong, to become a non-producer. 

"Eat, drink, and be merry." This is the creed 
of the waster, the man who has hoarded and decided 
to quit work. And this is the most dangerous sin 
of all. A class of people in society who have the 
money and the inclination to take life easy and eat, 
drink and make merry all the time, are breeders of 
unrest and trouble. The man who works hard every 
day for the bare necessities of life, will never be 
quite content to keep still so long as he sees wasted 
in foolish pleasures that which he knows is needful 
for the masses of the people. So long as the idle 
rich persist in employing men to haul their pet dogs 
around in an expensive automobile, there will be 
some laboring man who will persist, whether justly 



86 The Evangelistic Message 

or unjustly, in throwing a brick through the win- 
dow of that car. 

Conclusion 

These are the sins which lead to that poverty of 
soul which Jesus says brands a man as a fool. In his 
"The Rise of a Soul," Dr. James I. Vance has a fine 
chapter which he calls, "The Terminals of Love." 
He says, "One travels toward the thing he loves, 
slowly it may be, but surely; drawn thither by an 
unseen but irresistible force. The terminals of love 
are the things loved. Man goes where his heart is. 
He becomes what he worships. He grows into the 
image and likeness of that which he adores * * * 
The nation whose chief question is: 'How much is 
a man worth V will become a huge stock exchange 
and its people a race of money grabbers * * * 
The man who deliberately sells himself to dishonesty, 
impurity, lasciviousness, and sordid greed, will turn 
to the thing for which he has perjured his soul 

* * • The heart which entertains unclean imagi- 
nations and vile suggestions and which delights in 
and loves these abominations will become as foul as 
its filthy tenants. The terminal of a wicked love 
is a wicked character. An unholy love drives to- 
ward depravity of soul and degradation of life as 
resistlessly as the catapult projects its missile or 
the cannon hurls its conquering shot." When the 
sins of hoarding, ease, and self-indulgence take pos- 
session of the soul, men inevitably become poverty- 
stricken toward God. 

And for those who are in danger of this soul- 
poverty there is a more serious message in this par- 
able. "This night is thy soul required of thee * 

* * "At the very moment when this rich man 



The Man Jesus Called a Fool 87 

was congratulating his soul on its wonderful future, 
death had already laid its hand upon him. How ter- 
rible, to be taken out of the arrogance of these sins, 
unthinking, and in an instant into the presence of 
God! 

Speaking of the warning of this parable Henry 
Ward Beecher said, "When I was a lad, the old 
bell in the belfry used to ring a knell the sound of 
which I could not get out of my head for a month 
after hearing it. A young companion of mine died 
when I was absent at school, and I came back on the 
day of his funeral and heard that bell toll. And 
what tolling that was of the old New England bel- 
fries ! How the sound reverberated, and rocked and 
rolled, and clung to the air as if it never would die 
out ! How that old bell filled the whole air full, ring- 
ing and ringing out the solemn tidings of mortality ! 
Oh that there might be some ringings from out the 
belfry of iGod's heart that should fill the whole air 
of our thoughts and feelings in the same way ! And 
if there be one stroke, if there be one bell whose 
tongue should more than another syllable to us les- 
sons of instruction, it seems to me to be this, 'So 
is every man that layeth up treasure for himself, and 
is not rich toward God.' " 



THE FATALITY OF COMPROMISE 

* * # I will surely rend the kingdom from thee, 
and will give it to thy servant. — I Kings 11:11. 

THESE words picture the sad climax of what 
promised to be a brilliant and successful career. 
No young man ever faced life with greater oppor- 
tunities of success than did Solomon. "He was 
David's favorite son, by the woman for whose 
beauty David had staked his crown; reared in all 
integrity and wisdom; loved by the intensity of a 
woman, who, by loving, would make atonement for 
her sin; heir presumptive to a throne at its greatest 
power and splendor. All stars seemed kind * * * 
Yet the closing chapters of his life are full of gloom 
and terror * * * All the rich melody of his early 
life died out into a moan. The cups he drained held 
more dregs than nectar. Eventide belied the rosy 
promise of the morning." (Geo. C. Peck.) 

The sin which brought Solomon to the reaping 
time, which caused him to hear this sentence from 
the lips of Jehovah, was the sin of compromise. He 
had "split differences with sin." He had violated 
his vows to Jehovah to please his foreign wives. 
"He had adopted the spirit of compromise, and he 
lost his way through compromise. Great stalwart 
figure that he was, he met defeat, not in the open 
struggle, but by the insidious poison of compro- 
mise." 

Compromise or Decision 

Because this spirit has always brought men to 
ruin, and because it is very active in our age, we may 

88 



The Fatality of Compromise 89 

well learn a lesson from the tragic ending of this 
promising career. There are two dominant spirits 
which guide men's lives — the spirit of compromise 
and the spirit of decision. In the very beginning 
of His ministry Jesus set these two spirits in con- 
trast: "No man can serve two masters; for either 
he will hate the one and love the other; or else he 
will hold to one and despise the other. Ye cannot 
serve God and mammon." 

In his "Fundamental Questions/' Henry Church- 
ill King has a chapter on "The Question of Life's 
Fundamental Decision," in which he points out the 
fact that for every individual, life must at every 
point, be one of two things: We must choose be- 
tween a life of drifting or steering. Shall we allow 
our life to be simply a part of the mass, the crowd, 
or shall we guide it into the better ways? To drift 
is to compromise; to steer is to make some firm de- 
cisions. 

We must choose between domination by feeling or 
by rational purpose. To live by feeling alone is to 
compromise in the face of some of life's supreme 
decisions; but to have a rational purpose back of 
our actions is the result of right decisions. 

We must choose between a life of loyalty or dis- 
loyalty ; between fidelity or treachery to our friends, 
our God, and the best we know. The path to dis- 
loyalty is always the path of compromise. To be 
true to our conscience at all times means that we 
have mastered the power to decide. 

We must choose between the Father or the love 
of the world. Far back in the history of Christian- 
ity we find a Christian pastor speaking these words : 
"Love not the world, neither the things that are in 
the world. If any man love the world, the love of 



90 The Evangelistic Message 

the Father is not in him. For all that is in the 
world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes 
and the vain glory of life, is not of the Father but 
of the world. And the world passeth away, and the 
lust thereof ; but he that doeth the will of the Father 
abideth forever/ ' So runs this fundamental con- 
trast through all life, and each one of us must con- 
tinually face the alternative of compromise or de- 
cision. 

Compromise Always Fatal 

In the end compromise, when it has to do with 
the great moral issues of life and duty, is always 
fatal. When Wolsey was cast aside by the king for 
whom he had compromised his soul, his bitter cry 
was, "Would that I had served my God as faith- 
fully as I have served my king." It is the cry of 
those who have served mammon instead of God and 
who have been cast aside as moral and spiritual 
wrecks, or crushed beneath its mighty wheels. When 
men who are responsible for the destinies of nations, 
have compromised in the face of some crisis, the re- 
sults have been the same. It is said of Louis the 
king, that just before the French Revolution he met 
one day near his palace a peasant carrying a rude 
coffin. "What died the man of?" he asked. The 
peasant replied, "Of hunger, sire." This meant 
nothing to a king who was rolling in luxury. He 
soon forgot. But he remembered, when only a few 
months later, he stood upon the scaffold and looked 
into a sea of faces that knew no pity. Carlyle tells 
how Foulon was once asked how the starving populace 
were to live, and replied brutally, "Let them eat 
grass." His compromise in the face of the need of the 
people ended with a parade through the streets of 



The Fatality of Compromise 91 

Paris with his own head held high on a bloody pole 
and his ghastly mouth stuffed full of grass. To sow 
compromise is to reap a harvest of destruction. 

Conclusion 

There is an account of an old New England black- 
smith who made chains for his living. His rule was, 
" Seven links a day, and each link the anchor of a 
thousand souls." One day a new process was pro- 
posed to him whereby he could make "ten links a 
day and safe." He refused to listen. Others might, 
but not he. 

The years passed. The old blacksmith died and 
was almost forgotten. But one day a great ship 
was plowing its way across the ocean. A storm 
with its relentless waves was upon it. Sharp and 
clear comes the command, "Cast out the first an- 
chor." Over the sides it goes with its great chain 
following it. The anchor holds, the chain grows 
taut, and then, under the weight of an oncoming 
billow it snaps like a thread. "Cast out the second 
anchor," is the captain's call. The call is obeyed, 
and down into the mad sea the anchor chain rushes 
like a huge serpent; while the vessel rocks and 
shivers. The second anchor holds, but for a mo- 
ment only. The chain stiffens like a rod of steel, 
and like tow touched by fire it parts in twain, and 
the great ship is adrift again. "Cast out the reserve 
anchor," the captain calls again. And the third 
great chain glides into the seething water. Will it 
stand the strain of the stormy sea — for anxious lives 
are welded into the links of this last chain? The 
chain grows taut, it stands the strain, it holds — the 
maddened waves are powerless to break one link and 
the twelve hundred souls on board are safe. It was 



92 The Evangelistic Message 

the chain of the old blacksmith, ' ' Seven links a day, 
and each link the anchor of a thousand souls.' ' 

You may have been playing safe with your soul. 
That is not enough. Some day you will need some- 
thing to hold you, and when the storms come and 
you have cast out all those anchors and chains which 
seem to hold you securely now, and have seen them 
break one after another, you will need a reserve an- 
chor with a chain strong enough to defy the greatest 
storm. Saved and not safe is the word you will 
w^ant to hear then. Jesus Christ is the reserve an- 
chor which every man needs. His call is a call to a 
decision. 

Choose now whether you will be a disciple of his 
or not. Choose whether you will make the principles 
of his teaching the established convictions of your 
soul and live up to them. There are times and sea- 
sons of the soul. The Spirit of God strives with men 
and urges a decision for Christ and righteousness. 
The spiritual instincts in every soul struggle to be 
expressed when they hear the call of the Spirit. 
To repress them is to quench the Spirit. Many a 
human heart is a grave-yard full of the dust of 
beautiful thoughts and resolutions which have been 
put to death through compromise and lack of deci- 
sion. AVhich shall it be — compromise or decision? 



SAND OR ROOK 

Every one therefore that heareth these words of 
mine, and doeth them, shall be likened unto a wise 
man, who built his house upon the rock: * * * 
And every one that heareth these words of mine, and 
doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, 
who built his house upon the sand. — Matthew 7:24-27. 

ALL men are builders. Builders are of two gen- 
eral classes — those who build for time only, 
and those who build for eternity. The former build 
upon the sand, and the latter upon the rock. 

Things Common to All Builders 

They share the desire for a building. It is a 
refuge, a shelter in a time of storm. Then there are 
plans in harmony with the purpose of each builder. 
Each one makes choice of his own foundation. Each 
becomes active in the building enterprise; and the 
result is much similarity, in outward appearances 
at least, of the structures. 

But There are Serious Differences 

They placed different estimates upon the future. 
One built for the present only. The long future did 
not enter seriously into his calculations. It is said 
that when the temple of Minerva was erected at 
Athens, all sculptors were invited to compete in the 
carving of a great statue for its dome. On the day 
of the award a famous artist brought his work, a 
life-size statue of the goddess, so beautiful that it 
was received with acclamations of delight. But as 
it was raised to its place it grew smaller and smaller, 
until it seemed but a speck against the sky. The 

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94 The Evangelistic Message 

work of the poor mechanic was then unveiled, huge 
and uncouth ; but as it was raised aloft its deformi- 
ties vanished and it seemed more and more comely, 
until, reaching the dome, it took the very semblance 
of the goddess, and seemed animate with life. Thus 
if our work, our building, is only life-size; if we 
have measured only by the requirements of time and 
sense; how it will dwindle as it approaches eternity. 
But on the other hand, how it will become glorious, 
if we have wrought with eternity in view. 

It is easy to conceive of the man who built upon 
the sand as building more quickly than the one who 
digged deep to find the rock. It takes time and 
patience to build an enduring structure. The 
pyramids were centuries in building. They are with 
us today. It takes a man many years longer to reach 
maturity than it does an animal. He is of finer 
texture, and consequently of slower growth. It is 
comparatively easy to throw a structure together in 
any sort of fashion regardless of the foundation up- 
on which it rests. It takes trouble to seek the hidden 
rock that will make it secure. Many Christians 
fail because thought, prayer, guidance, require ef- 
fort, and they are not willing to pay the price. 

It is often difficult to distinguish the real Chris- 
tian from the man of the world. Their outward ap- 
pearance may be much the same. Their differences 
are mainly hidden in their hearts, just as the two 
foundations lay out of sight; but one reached down 
to the rock, while the other rested upon the shifting 
sand. The Christian's life is hid with Christ in God. 

The Universal Testing 

The buildings were subjected to the severest tests, 
and from every direction. They were tried from 



Sand or Rock 95 

beneath, for "the floods came"; from above, for 
"the rain descended;" and from the side, for "the 
winds blew." No superstructure insecurely based 
could stand against such fearful trials. 

Dr. Charles Eeynolds Brown vividly describes the 
behavior of the Spreckels Building, San Francisco, 
during the earthquake in 1906. It is a tower-like 
structure, slender, square in form, eighteen stories 
high, and seemingly, for such a building, not suffi- 
ciently based. Scientific men estimated that the 
swaying of the building "carried the center of the 
gravity beyond the base line many times during 
those fearful forty-eight seconds." But the builder 
was a man of experience and wisdom who "dug deep 
and laid the foundations" so solidly into and upon 
the rock, — not upon the loose sand that underlies 
so much of the city, — that when the 18th of April 
came testing every man's work the huge steel frame 
supported the swaying building for it was founded 
upon a rock. No life that is not sincerely rooted 
and grounded in Jesus Christ can withstand the 
fearful onslaughts of evil in time, and triumph in 
the end over the darkness that guards the gateway 
to eternity. 

Many who have trusted all to the shifting sands 
of this life have been compelled to acknowledge 
their mistake only when it was too late. The last 
words of Gibbon were, "All is dark and doubtful." 
The philosopher Thomas Hobbs said, "I am taking 
a fearful leap in the dark." Mirabeau exclaimed, 
"Give me more laudanum that I may not think of 
eternity. ' ' 

But those who built upon the foundation of God 
and his Christ were strengthened when the floods 
were out. Paul could say, "I have fought a good 



96 The Evangelistic Message 

fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the 
faith : henceforth there is laid up for me the crown 
of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous 
judge, shall give to me at that day." Fuller could 
say, "I have such a hope that with it I can plunge 
into eternity. " Philip Sidney, drawing near to the 
other shore, exclaimed, "I would not exchange my 
joys for the empires of the world." And as Cook- 
man felt "the tide which drew from out the bound- 
less deep turn again home," he cried, "I am sweep- 
ing through the gates washed in the blood of the 
Lamb." When the last test came to Dwight L. 
Moody, he said, "Is this dying? Why this is bliss. 
There is no valley. I have been within the gates. 
Earth is receding; heaven is opening; God is calling; 
I must go." 

"On Christ the solid rock I stand, 
All other ground is sinking sand." 



WHAT WE MAY DO TO THE HOLY SPIRIT 

Ye stiffnecked and uneircumeised in heart and 
ears, ye do always resist the Holy Spirit: as your 
fathers did, so do ye. — Acts 7:51. 

THE Scriptures plainly teach that we may, in 
certain ways, affect the Holy Spirit. He is a 
person as well as an influence. He thinks, feels, 
and wills. The human spirit does the same. Hence 
personalities produce effects on each other for good 
or ill. The human spirit, in its personality, may 
resist the divine Spirit in its personality; but it must 
be constantly borne in mind that our spirits are 
finite, and weak in willing, while the Holy is infinite, 
and mighty to do the will of God. 

There are a number of things set forth in the 
Bible that we may do to the Holy Spirit. 

We May Resist the Holy Spirit 

The martyr Stephen charged the Jews and their 
fathers with resisting the Holy Spirit; and Paul 
charged that "men of corrupt mind reprobate con- 
cerning the faith" also "resist the truth" (2 Tim. 
3:8). God will not overpower us. He respects our 
freedom. He knows that coercion would be of no 
avail. If there is to be any moral and spiritual 
quality in our act of acceptance, it must be free and 
untrammeled in its choice. Hence it will always be 
possible to reject the Spirit, for we are men and not 
brutes. It is better to be free, with even such a 
dread possibility before us, than to be unfree in 
doing what is right. Of course man refuses the 
highest freedom and the greatest satisfactions when 
he rejects the Spirit of God; but, if he prefers the 
broad way that leadeth to destruction, he must abide 

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98 The Evangelistic Message 

the consequences of his choice. It is thus dreadful, 
death-dealing, to resist, to put away from us, the 
wooing, sympathetic, life-giving Spirit of God. 

We May Insult the Holy Spirit 

In the Hebrew letter we have this solemn warn- 
ing: "A man that hath set at nought Moses' law 
dieth without compassion on the word of two or 
three witnesses : of how much sorer punishment, 
think ye, shall he be judged worthy, who hath trod- 
den under foot the Son of God, and hath counted 
the blood of the covenant wherewith he was sancti- 
fied an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the 
Spirit of grace" (Heb. 10:28, 29). Both Weymouth 
and Moffatt, in their respective versions of the New 
Testament, substitute " insulted' ' for "despite." 
It is possible, therefore, for human nature to become 
so low as to actually "insult the Spirit of grace." 
It is the office of sin to bring us to this deplorable 
state. All sanctity and all holiness gone. We have 
"outraged the Spirit of love." We have fallen from 
celestial heights and joined with the hissing ser- 
pents of the pit. 

We May Grieve the Holy Spirit 

We are exhorted to "Grieve not the Holy Spirit 
of God in w T hom ye were sealed unto the day of re- 
demption" (Eph. 4:30). Isaiah speaks of those who 
"rebelled and grieved his Holy Spirit" (Isa. 63:10). 
There seems no way to vivify this thought in our 
minds, save by thinking of the wayward son upon 
whom his parents have lavished the wealth of their 
affection, and for whom they have made every sac- 
rifice, and opened to him the door of every possible 
opportunity, and yet in spite of it all he disappoints 
them by his waywardness, lack of responsibility, 



What We May Do to the Holy Spirit 99 

and base ingratitude "sharper than a serpent's 
tooth." He grieves them at their hearts. So it is 
with the Spirit of God. We refuse his fellowship, 
his love, his gifts and his power of an endless life. 
In all our afflictions he is afflicted with us ; yet we are 
cold, inconsiderate, ungrateful, unmoved, and self- 
sufficient. Thus we grieve the Holy Spirit of God. 

We May Quench the Holy Spirit 

A new enthusiasm in behalf of humanity was 
born in the hearts of men on the day that the Holy 
Spirit descended upon the disciples in the city of 
Jerusalem. It was an enthusiasm for holiness and 
a more abundant life. A new truth, especially a new 
felt truth, was the basis of this new enthusiasm. 
Henceforth men were to be baptized in the Holy 
Spirit and in fire (Matt. 3:11). "Every great 
movement," says Dr. John Watson, "which has 
stirred the depth of life and changed the face of 
history has sprung from some profound sentiment 
and powerful emotion." "Elevation of character 
depends upon warmth of affection," says Dr. Jowett. 
"A fiery heart by the energy of its own heat creates 
a self -preserving atmosphere against the devil." It 
is the mission of the Holy Spirit to create a new 
fire, a new passion in the heart. He should have 
His way with us. But men are afraid that He will 
lead them into a life that will be an embarrassment 
in the presence of their friends, and cause them to 
be denominated as "queer." Hence they "quench" 
the flame of the Spirit. But Paul exhorts us to 
"never quench the fire of the Spirit" (1 Thess. 
5:19). It is dangerous. The fire may go out, and 
the new passion for the righteousness of God and 
the salvation of humanity become a dead cinder. 



100 The Evangelistic Message 

We May Blaspheme the Holy Spirit 

Here are two Scriptures that have very solemn 
import: " Every sin and blasphemy shall be for- 
given unto men; but the blasphemy against the 
Spirit shall not be forgiven'' (Matt. 12:31). "Who- 
soever shall blaspheme against the Holy Spirit hath 
never forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin" 
(Mark 3 :29 ) . The hasty, superficial, prejudiced 
word against Christ, or even against the Holy Spirit, 
or the Father, may have forgiveness ; but to deliber- 
ately, intentionally, utter a calumny against the 
good spirit of God indicates an impediment in the 
inward self that precludes the idea of healing, res- 
toration, forgiveness, and hence is an eternal sin. 
"Either make the tree good and its fruit good," 
says Jesus in this connection, "or make the tree 
rotten and its fruit rotten; for the tree is known by 
its fruit. You brood of vipers, how can you speak 
good when you are evil? For the mouth utters 
what the heart is full of" (Moffatt's translation). 
The eternal sin against the Holy Spirit, therefore, 
seems confined to those whose natures are so at one 
with the evil, with sin, that they are incapable of 
renewal by the power of God. 

"A tenderer light than moon or sun, 
Than song of earth a sweeter hymn, 
May shine and sound forever on, 
And thou be deaf and dim. 

"Forever round the Mercy-seat 
The guiding lights of love shall burn; 
But what, if habit-bound, thy feet 
Should lack the will to turn?" 



OUT OF HARMONY 

Now the spirit of Jehovah departed from Saul, 
and an evil spirit from Jehovah troubled him. — I 
Sam. 16:14. 

**1VTO man is so desolate, even in the midst of 
-L ^ crowding duties and many friends, as the 
man who is conscious that the fellowship which he 
once had with God is now broken. Apart from God, 
any one, even the most prominent among his fellows, 
is singularly and pitifully alone. There is profound 
pathos in the search of Saul's servants for harmonies 
that would replace the discord of his life." 

Few men have had greater opportunities in life 
than king Saul. His position as king came without 
any self-seeking. In the beginning of his reign he 
enjoyed the friendship and guidance of one of the 
greatest of God's prophets. But Saul failed. It is 
the tragedy of his failure, and the reasons for it 
that suggest our message. 

Out of Harmony 

Saul was out of harmony with his God. He had 
committed a great sin. He had ignored the sanc- 
tions of religion and had determined to run his gov- 
ernment to please himself. There were two prevail- 
ing parties in Israel at this time ; the religious party 
under the leadership of the prophet Samuel, and the 
political or military party. Saul came into power 
through the religious party, and was the favorite 
of Samuel. For a time he was true to the ideals of 
this party. His break with Samuel came when he 
listened to the military party and revealed the dis- 

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102 The Evangelistic Message 

obedience of his soul to Jehovah. And, when Saul 
ignored the sanctions of religion, the spirit of Jeho- 
vah departed from him. 

When he realized what had happened instead of 
seeking to restore that harmony through a confes- 
sion of his sin and repentance, he sought methods 
which were suggested to him by his servants. They 
were sure they had a cure for his troubles, and 
David is brought in with his harp. For a time this 
seems to have caused the evil spirit to depart, but 
that Saul found no permanent relief through this 
method we know from what followed. 

There are few more pathetic pictures than the 
accounts of Saul's terrible jealousy toward David 
and his almost insane ravings. His life closes with 
a tragedy. Dr. Geo. A. Gordon has pictured it thus: 
"The last time we see Saul is the night before his 
final battle on the great plain of Esdraelon, at the 
foot of the mountains of Gilboa. The passage in the 
Bible descriptive of that night is one of the most 
impressive and powerful in the literature of the 
world. You see this magnificent man, whose nature 
has been distorted, who has become jealous, cruel, 
insane, confronted with a vast crisis in the national 
life, with his enemies embattled there against him; 
he is conscious that his army is demoralized and 
unfit to meet the enemy on the morrow; he returns 
to the morning of his life, when he spoke with the 
prophet and communed with him on the house-top 
in the spring of the day, and went away in royal 
strength and hope. He remembers that there is a 
poor witch at Endor spared from the general per- 
secution, and in the darkness of the night he makes 
his way to consult, through this poor impostor, the 
soul of the dead Samuel. * # * He staggers out 



Out of Harmony 103 

of the witch's home to the field of battle in the 
morning, and there he dies. The glorious idealist 
broken in defeat, and his death a symbol of the de- 
generation of his life. Shakespeare tells the tragic 
tale in his great words: 

'Full many a glorious morning have I seen 
Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye, 
Kissing with golden face the meadows green, 
Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy; 
Anon permit the basest clouds to ride 
With ugly rack upon his celestial face, 
And from the forlorn world his visage hide, 
Stealing unseen to west with his disgrace/ 

This is the way Saul went, 'Stealing unseen to west 
with his disgrace.' " 

A Picture of Modern Life 

Is not this tragic picture of Saul an accurate pic- 
ture of thousands in our modern life? At the bot- 
tom of much, if not all, of our restlessness and nerv- 
ousness is the tremendous fact that our fellowship 
with God has been broken; that we are out of har- 
mony with our Father in Heaven. 

And the reason is the same. We have ignored the 
sanctions of religion. We have become too busy, or 
too rich, or too cultured, or too mean to attend 
church. We have taken things into our own hands. 
There is nothing more evident in our modern life 
than the fact, that respect for authority that finds 
its source outside ourselves, is on the wane. We 
are becoming laws unto ourselves. We have de- 
cided to ignore God and take a wild chance. 

And when people begin to feel what has hap- 



104 The Evangelistic Message 

pened they do just as Saul did. Some one always 
has a suggestion. There are many agencies in the 
world which bid for an opportunity to restore the 
harmonies of the soul. This largely accounts for 
our pleasure craze. People go to the movies to quiet 
their nerves. Some blood-and-thunder-wild-west 
production is so much more soothing than the church 
service. They must go to the parks and a thousand 
other places to rest their souls. There is no rest for 
them in the house of God. The mad rush for the 
lighter things of life is evidence that many are try- 
ing to replace the discord in their lives which has 
come because they are out of touch with God. 

And in the hour of calamity and the loss of loved 
ones, people are turning, as Saul did, to those im- 
postors who claim to have discovered a short-cut to 
heaven and to communion with the spirits of the 
dead. Spiritism is the last desperate attempt of 
thousands to restore the lost harmonies of their 
souls. 

The Great Harmonizer 

There is nothing in the pleasures and attractions 
of this world that can restore the fellowship of a 
soul with God. Jesus Christ was, and still is the 
great harmonizer, the great reconciler. We can do 
no better here than study two passages from Paul, 
who was the apostle of reconciliation. (Eomans 
5:1-11; 8:31-39; 2 Cor. 5:17-21.) 

Conclusion 

R. J. Campbell closes one of his heart-searching 
sermons with the following illustration and appeal : 
"In a certain village in Germany there lived an old 
blind organist, who had formerly been a musician 



Out of Harmony 105 

of promise, but he had become too feeble to play, 
and his organ had also fallen into disuse. All that 
he himself could get out of it were poor, wailing, 
discordant sounds, trembling and uncertain as the 
touch of his aged hands. After a time people began 
to laugh at him and regard his organ as a useless 
thing. * * * But one day a stranger came into 
that village to give a recital upon the grand new 
organ in the public hall. It was the great master 
Sebastian Bach. Tremblingly, the old man sought 
him, despite the rebuffs of the crowd, and begged 
him to come and play one symphony upon his old 
instrument. He did so; and it is said that music of 
a more ravishing sweetness was drawn from that 
battered organ than had been produced on. the new 
one or had ever previously proceeded from the old. 
It was like a resurrection — yea, a transfiguration. 
All those years that organ had been waiting for its 
master and had found him at last. * *■■-.* 

"Oh, losers in the battle of life! Oh, soiled and 
desecrated temples of the Holy Ghost! Have you 
indeed failed in spirit so that divine melody issues 
from your heart no more? What criest thou, 
soul? — 

'Yet with hands by evil stained, 
And an ear by discord pained, 
I am groping for the keys 
Of the heavenly harmonies.' 

Lo, Jesus of Nazareth passing by! Behold the 
Master hand that can summon new music from your 
weary heart. Behold the Mighty One "Who can in- 
breathe a new spirit to your dead hopes and with- 
ered aims. 'Behold the Lamb of God which taketh 
away the sin of the world. ' ' ' 



REFUSING A GREAT INVITATION 

* * * And he went away sorrow fid: for he was 
one that had great possessions. — Mark 10:22. 

And he said unto him, I will not go; hut I will de- 
part to mine own land and' to my kindred. — Numbers 
10:30. 

BOTH of these texts contain refusals of a great 
invitation. In the first we have the words of 
a certain young man who came to Jesus seeking 
eternal life. As he told the simple story of his 
blameless character under the law, Jesus looked on 
him and loved him. But the keen eye of the Master 
immediately saw the trouble and placed his finger 
on the weak spot in this otherwise noble character. 
He had great possessions, and the invitation of 
Jesus struck at the very roots of his life: "One 
thing thou lackest: go, sell whatsoever thou hast, 
and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure 
in heaven: and come, follow me." The young man's 
countenance fell, he was wedded to his possessions, 
he could not face the acid test; so he refused the 
great invitation to use his possessions in a worthy 
cause. 

Our second text comes from one of those obscure 
chapters which record the wanderings of the He- 
brew people on their way to the promised land. It 
introduces a character who is utterly unknown to 
most people, and who, perhaps, would never have 
been mentioned had he not come in contact with 
Moses. The tribes, under their leader Moses, had 
received orders to march. They were going into a 
strange territory. Moses was on the lookout for a 
man who could act as a guide for them through this 

106 



Refusing a Great Invitation 107 

strange land. He selected Hobab and said to him, 
"Come with us and we will do thee good. * * *" 
Hobab refused this invitation. Moses appeals to him 
again, "Leave us not I pray thee ; forasmuch as thou 
knowest how we are to encamp in the wilderness, 
and thou shalt be to us instead of eyes." The impli- 
cation is that Hobab was acquainted with this 
strange land into which Moses was to lead his peo- 
ple. But there is no record that this second appeal 
was successful. So far as we know Hobab did not 
accept the invitation. 

Two Types of Men 

The biography of these two characters is short; 
but enough is given to tell us what they were. The 
young man, while according to the law his life was 
blameless, was wedded to his possessions. The other 
man, so far as the record goes, may not have been 
rich in material possessions, but he had something 
else which was of infinite value to Moses. He had 
a knowledge concerning the land into which Moses 
must lead his people, and he had an insight into its 
difficulties. Here we have two types of men repre- 
sented, both with valuable possessions. And in the 
incidents from which our texts are taken we have 
suggested the appeal and invitation of the church 
to these two types of men. 

To the man who has possessions, and who is wed- 
ded to them, the church has a two-fold invitation. 
It invites him for his own sake. The man with 
possessions needs the church and the opportunity 
which its work offers for the investment of his pos- 
sessions. He needs the church for the salvation of 
his soul. "How hardly/' says Jesus, "shall they 
that have riches enter into the kingdom of God!" 



108 The Evangelistic Message 

The only agency that has ever broken the soul-de- 
stroying grip which possessions get on a man is 
religion. Then, the church invites this man for its 
own sake. It has need for his possessions after 
they have been consecrated to God. The church has 
a perfect right to seek possessions if it first seeks 
the souls of the men who hold them. To show a 
man how, through the church, he can serve thou- 
sands with his possessions, and bring real joy and 
peace of mind to himself, is a noble piece of work. 
And to the man who has special knowledge of 
certain areas of human life and experience, through 
which it must travel on its long journey, the church 
also has a two-fold invitation. He is invited first 
for his own sake. To the physiologist and biologist, 
the psychologist and educator, the sociologist and 
economist, the chemist, the philosopher, the poet, 
the historian — any man who is at home in any spe- 
cial field, and whose insight has made him aware 
of its difficulties, the church says, "Come with us 
and we will do thee good." One of the gravest 
dangers of any specialized knowledge is that it shall 
lose, or never get, the spiritual point of view. For 
all these men the church has a point of view and a 
standard of values which they need. But the church 
also invites these men for its own sake. No fields 
of human thought and activity should be closed to 
the church. Its mission is as broad as humanity. 
These specialists can be as eyes to the church in its 
endeavors to serve the whole man. When the church 
enters the realm of education it needs trained edu- 
cators. When it tries to still the troubled social 
and economic waters it needs special insight. When 
it seeks to unite religion and good health it needs 
the eyes of trained men. When it advocates pure 



Refusing a Great Invitation 109 

food and water it needs the chemist. When it would 
probe the deeps of the mind and the heart, or under- 
stand the past, it needs the philosopher and poet and 
historian. 

The Right of the Church 

Why should the church presume to invite these 
men, to tell them of their need of its message, and 
of its need of their possessions and knowledge? 
Because, first of all, the church is a divine institu- 
tion. Other institutions offer much that can help 
men, and lay claim to their possessions and knowl- 
edge ; but they get their power and inspiration from 
men. Not so with the church — its inspiration and 
power is of God. Other institutions may speak for 
man — the church speaks for God. Other insitu- 
tions exist for a century or so and then pass away ; 
but the church of Jesus Christ is eternal. "The 
gates of hell shall not prevail against it." 

There is another reason. The church is the great- 
est institution on the face of the earth. Bruce Bar- 
ton says, "Every local church is a branch-office of 
the greatest business in the world. That business — 
which is the church — has more paid employes than 
any great corporation in the world; it has head- 
quarters in every country; its total budget amounts 
to hundreds of millions of dollars. It supports 
hospitals in every great city; it supports hundreds 
of colleges ; it cares for thousands of babies in its 
Orphan Homes; it is curing sick people in India and 
China with its doctors ; it is teaching boys and girls 
in Turkey and Hindustan * * * To run a business 
that size is a job for men, big red-blooded men — " 
and the church has a right to invite these men with 



110 The Evangelistic Message 

their possessions and knowledge to help run its busi- 
ness. 

Conclusion 

We have no record of what happened to these 
men who refused the invitation to cast their lot 
with God's people. We do have a record of the 
lives and achievements of the men who did accept 
the invitation. Moses, David, and the long line of 
Hebrew prophets — these names shall never die. 
And Peter, James, John, Matthew, and Paul — their 
names are the great names of the earth. 

The young man might have become a disciple and 
left his story of the Christ in a written gospel. He 
might have preached like Peter or Paul and left 
the stamp of his character upon the world for all 
time — but he refused the invitation and went back 
to his possessions. Hobab might have gone with 
Moses and God's people to the verge of the promised 
land. He might have been one of those immortal 
few who crossed over and took possession of the 
land. But he refused the invitation and went away 
to his own people. Thus the curtain falls upon the 
lives with great opportunities, leaving them in the 
outer darkness. Where will it leave you? 



OURSELVES AND OUR SHADOWS 

# * # they even carried out the sick into the 
streets, and laid them on beds and couches, that, as 
Peter came by, at the least his shadow might over- 
shadow some one of them. — Acts 5:15. 

THE history of the world is the lengthened shad- 
ows of great men. Witness such names as Abra- 
ham, Moses, Samuel, David, Isaiah, John the Baptist, 
Peter, John, Paul, Augustine, Calvin, John Knox, 
Bunyan, Wesley, Alexander Campbell, Henry Ward 
Beecher, to take only a few names from the roster 
of religious worthies. We walk in their shadows 
to-day. Augustine controlled the thinking of the 
church for a thousand years ; and then his teaching 
was revamped by Calvin, who cast his shadow over 
Protestantism for four hundred years. Influence 
through personality, direct and indirect, is the most 
potent factor in life. 

Ourselves — Direct Influence 

Every one exerts conscious influence in some direc- 
tion. This influence will be in proportion to what 
the individual is in his essential personality — his 
capacity, his talents, his purpose, and the strength 
of his will. 

It was undoubtedly the purpose of Jesus to con- 
sciously influence the world to believe on Him as 
the one able to save unto the uttermost. To this end 
He sent forth the apostles to teach all nations. 
Every believer became a conscious herald of the 
Good News. They that were scattered abroad went 
everywhere preaching the Word. Their success 

111 



112 The Evangelistic Message 

was largely due to the serious purpose of their 
hearts and the Holy Spirit which had been sent 
down from heaven. 

Too many church members conceive of their reli- 
gious duty as being to do nothing at all. The second 
bishop of Alabama often told the following story, 
which illustrates the idea that many have of joining 
the church. He had taken an old Negro into the Epis- 
copal Church, who had quit its fellowship soon after. 
When the Bishop met Josiah, after a few weeks, he 
asked: "Josiah, why did you leave my church? 
Anybody hurt your feelings there, or anything like 
that?" 

"La, no, Marse Hooker. La, No! De Tiscopals 
dey is gem 'men if dey ain't nottin' else. Dar ain't 
nobody hut my feelins. No, sah. I lef dat ehu'ch 
'caze I couldn't read in de book. Dey all reads and 
ansahs backs so cheerful Ink, and des kase I can't 
read and can't come in right, an' de folks looks 
roun' when I ansahs wrong an' hearty, I boun' to 
leave dat ehu'ch." 

"And why did you leave the Methodist church so 
suddenly?" 

"Well, you see, Marse Hooker, dem Mefodis folks 
dey is al'a's holdin a 'Quiry Meetin.' Now you know 
yousi'f, Marse Hooker, cullud men can't stan' too 
much 'quirin' into. I 'bleeged to quit dat ehu'ch." 

"Do you think, Josiah, you can stick to the Bap- 
tist Church?" 

"La, yas, massa! 'Kaze wid de Baptists hit's jes' 
dip an' done wid it!" 

Christianity cannot be made to prevail if church 
members generally take the view of the old darkey. 
There is too much joining and nothing more. Join- 
ing the church means enlisting for a war. Every 



Ourselves and Our Shadows 113 

member must be a soldier for Christ. He must 
learn how to wield the sword of the Spirit, which is 
the word of God. He must exercise himself in a con- 
scious way for God. 

Our Shadows — Indirect Influence 

What we say and do when we are not conscious 
that we are starting waves of influence that will 
tell for or against Jesus Christ often produces mo- 
mentous results. 

The silent shadow of the everyday life helps to 
make friends or enemies for Christ, — helps to stabil- 
ize or demoralize the communities in which we live. 
Says the Seattle Churchman: "A little clock in a 
jeweler's window in a certain Western town stopped 
one day for half an hour, at fifteen minutes of nine. 
School-children, noticing the time, stopped to play; 
people hurrying to the train, looking at the clock, 
began to walk leisurely; professional men, after a 
look at the clock, stopped to chat a minute with one 
another; working men and women noted the time 
and lingered a little longer in the sunshine, and 
all were half an hour late because one small clock 
stopped. Never had these people known how much 
they had depended upon that clock till it had led 
them astray.' ' So the community is unconsciously 
depending upon the influence of Christians. One 
may think that he has no influence, but he cannot 
go wrong without leading others astray. 

Then there is the great matter of influence after 
death. Sam Jones died in October, 1906. Liquor 
men, in one of the counties of Georgia, thinking they 
could win with the intrepid leader of the prohibition 
forces gone, called an electiou under the local option 
laws of the State. The prohibitionists were frightened. 



114 The Evangelistic Message 

How could they win with their leader gone? But 
they determined to fight. They lifted up a banner 
inscribed "For Sam Jones and Prohibition." They 
mounted his name on the ballots. Liquor registered 
eighty-five votes, and prohibition 1,686. This county 
set on fire other counties, and soon the whole of 
Georgia was in the prohibition ranks. Sam Jones' 
shadow was over the land for good. 

It was freely predicted that the movement inaugu- 
rated by the Campbells would cease to move when 
the great leader died at Bethany in 1866. But in 
every way its greatest gains have been made since 
his death. His shadow became an ever enlarging 
and ennobling influence. 

The Measure of Influence 

It is impossible to measure the extent of influence. 
It reaches beyond the confines of time into eternity. 
Richard Gibbs wrote a tract entitled "The Bruised 
Reed." A tin peddler gave it to a boy named Rich- 
ard Baxter, and through reading it he was brought 
to Christ. Baxter wrote "A Call to the Uncon- 
verted.' ' Among the thousands converted by it was 
Philip Dodridge, who in turn wrote "The Rise and 
Progress of Religion in the Soul." This book fell 
into the hands of William Wilberforce, who became 
the great emancipator of slaves in the British colo- 
nies, and won him to Christ. Wilberforce wrote "A 
Practical View of Christianity," which fired the 
heart of Leigh Richmond, who wrote the "Dairy- 
man's Daughter," of which four million copies up to 
1849 had been circulated. It has been translated into 
fifty languages. What a mighty and immeasurable 
chain of influence Richard Gibbs started with his 
"Bruised Reed." 



Ourselves and Our Shadows 115 

"A mother sang to her child one day 

A song of that beautiful home above ; 
Sang it as only a woman sings 

Whose heart is full of a mother's love. 

"And many a time in the years that came 

He heard the sound of that low sweet song; 
It took him back to his childhood days, 
It kept his feet from the paths of wrong. 



'A mother spoke to her child one day 
In an angry voice that made him start, 

As though an arrow had sped that way 
And pierced his loving and tender heart ; 

'And when he had grown to man's estate, 

And was tempted and tried, as all men are, 
He fell; for his mother's angry words 
Had left on his heart a lasting scar." 



WORLDLINESS 

I pray not that thou shouldest take them from the 
world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the 
evil one. — John 17:15. 

THE disciples were not to be abstracted from the 
world, but to be so reinforced with heavenly wis- 
dom and power as to be kept from the evil. The world 
was the proper theater for their activities. They 
were to be in it, while it was to be out of them. The 
ship is natural and powerful in the water ; but help- 
less and ruined if the water is in it. 

Worldliness Defined 

A thing is not necessarily worldly because it has 
been labeled as such. Labels have their place, no 
doubt, but we like to determine the quality of a 
thing for ourselves. In some churches instrumental 
music is classed as worldly; but the majority of 
Christian people think of the church organ as an 
aid to worship. 

Faber described the world as being "not alto- 
gether matter, nor yet altogether spirit. It is not 
man only, not Satan only, nor is it exactly sin. It 
is an infection, an inspiration, an atmosphere, a life, 
a coloring matter, a pageantry, a fashion, a taste, 
a witchery. None of all these names suit it, and all 
of them suit it. ' ' 

Jowett describes it after this fashion: "It is a 
spirit, a temperament, an attitude of soul. It is life 
without high callings, life devoid of lofty ideals. 
It is a gaze always horizontal, never vertical. Its 
motto is i forward/ never 'upward/ Its goal is suc- 
cess, not holiness. Hearing no mystic voices, it is 

116 



Worldliness 117 

destitute of reverence. It never bows in rapt and 
silent wonder in the secret place. It experiences no 
awe-inspiring perceptions of a mysterious presence. 
Its life is bounded by superficies. It stops at the 
veil, the thin, gauzy covering of the Eternal. It has 
lusts, but no supplications. It has ambition, but no 
aspiration. God is not denied; He is forgotten and 
ignored." 

The World We Are to Avoid 

The Apostle John has described this world: "Do 
not love the world, nor the things in the world 
# # # For the things in the world — the cravings 
of the earthly nature, the cravings of the eyes, the 
show and pride of life — they all come, not from the 
Father, but from the world. And the world, with 
its cravings, is passing away, but he who does God's 
will continues forever" (I John 2:15-17). 

The world that swims in space, with its cloud- 
capped mountains, its gorgeous sunsets, its rolling 
plains, its laughing brooks and mighty rivers, its 
great oceans that lave all shores, is not the world 
that we are to avoid loving; but "the cravings of 
the earthly nature, # # * of the eyes, the show 
and pride of life." 

Why We Are to Avoid It 

The spirit of worldliness shuts out the higher 
view of life. One of Buny an ? s characters is so busily 
engaged with his muckrake that he never looks up 
to see the angel who is offering him a golden crown. 
The stars may garnish in vain the canopy of heaven, 
if we never lift our eyes to behold their beauty. 
The riches of grace in Christ Jesus are all in vain, 



118 The Evangelistic Message 

if we do not reach out the hand of the heart to 
grasp them and make them our own. 

But we should chiefly avoid these things because 
they pass away. What is really more transient than 
"the show and pride of life?" We once stood upon 
the bank of a mighty river when its flood was over- 
flowing its banks. It was a sort of wonderful 
pageantry; but in a few days it was gone. The 
rocks and hills, however, remained unshaken and 
unmoved. So with this world. It passes away, 
"but he who does God's will continues forever." 

The Blessed Possession of Unworldliness 

The best defence against all contagion is exuber- 
ant health. To be filled with the Spirit, is to leave 
no place or desire for the corrupting things of the 
world. Christ said, "the prince of this world 
cometh: and hath nothing in me" (John 14:30). 
There was no affinity between him and Christ, 
nothing in Christ that corresponded to what was in 
him, and hence it was not difficult for Christ to re- 
ject him. So with us. As long as the spirit of the 
world is in us it will be difficult, yea impossible, for 
us to resist it. If we enjoy a picture show that is 
corrupting in its influence, it is because some of 
that corruption is in us. We see a part of ourselves 
on the screen. The man out of whom seven demons 
were cast, was taken possession of again, because 
he remained empty. The empty soul is a tempta- 
tion to evil influences. But to have our affections 
set on things above where Christ is; to be full of 
the spirit of unworldliness, is to be proof against 
all the fierv assaults of this world. 



STIRRING THE EAGLE'S NEST 

As an eagle that stirreth up her nest, 

That fluttereth over her young, 

He spread abroad his wings, he took them, 

He bare them on his pinions. — Deuteronomy 32:11. 

THIS passage, found in the Song of Moses, cele- 
brates the greatness and goodness of Jehovah 
in dealing with his people. Leaving the court of 
the Pharaohs, Moses spent forty years in the land of 
Midian as a shepherd. This kind of life made him 
a student of the book of nature. As the first astron- 
omers were doubtless shepherds, so were the first 
naturalists. In traversing the regions about Horeb 
with his flocks and herds, Moses had observed the 
eagle nesting among the crags, her care of her 
young, how she brooded and fed them; how, when 
the time came to try their wings, she stirred up their 
downy nest and made it a bed of thorns to prick and 
irritate their tender flesh until their only? escape 
from torment was in effort at flight. The man of 
God had seen the eagle circling toward the sun fol- 
lowed by the wavering, uncertain flight of the 
eaglet; and often, too, he had seen the eaglet pre- 
served from destruction by the sudden swoop of the 
mother bird to prevent its fall and to bear it upon 
her wings. 

"When Moses, in after years, became the leader and 
emancipator of a great people, he said, "God deals 
with us as the eagle with her young. He broods 
over us through his spirit ; He stirs us up when we 
become calloused by sin; and our faltering efforts 
to rise to higher heights of holiness he sustains, He 
bears us upon His wings." 

119 



120 The Evangelistic Message 

Discontent and Progress 

"Godliness with contentment is great gain," said 
the apostle. If godliness is the foundation of our 
contentment, it is right that we should be content. 
But we must also bear in mind that godliness is 
progressive. We are exhorted to "grow in the grace 
and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus 
Christ." The same apostle who urged contentment 
also said "I press toward the mark." 

God has various ways of making us dissatisfied 
with our present condition. The Israelites, too well 
satisfied with the flesh pots of Egypt, have their 
bondage increased until they groan under their bur- 
dens and prayers to God for deliverance are wrung 
from their hearts. The iron heel of tyranny is upon 
their necks. They long for freedom. Their last re- 
sort was God, and turning to Him they found the 
coveted deliverance. 

God uses the Holy Spirit to stir up discontent in 
our hearts. "And he, when he is come, will convict 
the world in respect of sin, and of righteousness, 
and of judgment" (John 16:8). God's Holy Spirit 
works through human personalities — through the 
preachers of His word. It requires courage to let 
the Holy Spirit have His way with us. It is not 
exactly pleasant to so preach as to stir up the spirit 
of discontent. It is far easier to go on in the smooth 
way, draw your salary, be at ease in Zion, let every 
one alone. But God says : ' ' Son of man, I have made 
thee a watchman unto the house of Israel: There- 
fore hear the word of My mouth, and give them 
warning from Me. When I say unto the wicked, 
Thou shalt surely die; and thou givest him no warn- 
ing, nor speakest to warn the wicked from his 



Stirring the Eagle's Nest 121 

wicked way, to save his life ; the wicked man shall 
die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at 
Thy hand" (Ezekiel 3:17, 18). 

Holding Up the Mirror of God's Word 

Most people are unaware of the deformities of 
sin. A man looking into a mirror saw blood on his 
face. He had not been conscious of its presence 
until the unvarnished mirror revealed it. As we 
look into the mirror of God's word many defects 
will be seen. David was not conscious of the enor- 
mity of his sin until Nathan held up the mirror of 
truth and he saw the hideous reflection of his crime. 
Felix trembled as he saw himself in the inspired 
words of Paul. Lying, dishonesty, intemperance, 
impurity are such hideous deformities of character 
that the realization of them being a part of us humil- 
iates, disconcerts, and shames us into the dust. 

The Revelation of Unconscious Powers 

Conviction on account of sin is not enough. The 
consciousness of sin, that cannot be relieved by 
hope or faith, works death. Before the sinner can 
escape from his misery, from his misspent, mis- 
shapen life, he must believe in God and in His Christ. 
This faith brings vision, a revelation of innate pow- 
ers, and a conscious quickening of abilities that were 
before unrealized, just as the eaglet's efforts at 
flight reveal its power to fly. All that the sinner 
needs to do in order to call out the vast potentiali- 
ties of his own soul is to trust God and take the 
forward step. This taps the reservoir of his un- 
conscious powers and vents them into his conscious 
life. 

All ministers know what salvation has come to 



122 The Evangelistic Message 

weak, discouraged, struggling churches by daring 
to undertake the seemingly impossible. Hidden re- 
sources came to light as advance was made. When 
Dr. Kirk's church in Boston refused to admit to 
membership the eighteen-year-old Moody because his 
examination was so unsatisfactory, Moody did not 
suspect that he had hidden powers whose develop- 
ment would make him one of the greatest of modern 
evangelists. The divine energy is latent in all souls; 
all churches; and it only awaits some propitious 
stirring for its release. 

God's Protection Assured 

God's Spirit broods over His people. It develops 
and guides their energies aright. It saves them 
from Charybdis on the one hand and Scylla on 
the other. As the mother eagle saves the eaglet from 
being dashed upon the rocks before its wings are 
strong enough to support flight, so God delivers us 
from temptation, from destruction, and makes all 
things work together for good to them that love 
Him, who are called according to His purpose. Or, 
to change the figure, God holds the rudder while we 
labor at the oar. We are workers together with God. 
We trust all to his guidance and launch out into 
the deep. 

Trying Our Wings 

John McNeill, a well-known Scotch evangelist, 
tells us of a friend of his who owned an eagle which 
he had captured when young. He raised it as near 
as he could as a domestic fowl. At length he was 
compelled to sell his possessions and go to the other 
side of the world. What should he do with his 
eagle now? He did not like to give it away nor 



Stirring the Eagle's Nest 123 

sell it to a stranger. So he decided to give it its 
freedom. He would give it back to itself. He would 
set it free. 

"He opened the enclosure where it had been 
kept/' says the narrator, "and brought the bird out 
to the back green. It walked about; this seemed like 
a rather larger place than its daily run — that was 
all. The man was disappointed. He took the big 
bird in his arms, lifted it, and placed it upon the 
garden wall. The eagle turned and looked down 
upon him. Just then the sun that had been behind 
the clouds, shone out warm and bright, and poured 
its beams down upon the captive bird. It lifted its 
eyes to the sun, and pulled itself to its utmost 
height. What thoughts were stirring in its breast 
then? Does a captive eagle recollect the cliffs and 
rocky crags, and feel again the tempest's breath, and 
see the lightning's zigzag path over the storm and 
along the sea? It unfolded one mighty wing — then 
stretched out the other — then gave a shrill scream to 
the sun and its native crags, and was soon but a 
vanishing point in the deep, blue sky." 

It is time for young people, older people, to try 
their wings. As no eagle was made to live in a 
henhouse, so no soul was made to be satisfied with 
the things of this w^orld. 

"Rise, my soul, and stretch thy wings, 
Thy better portion trace; 
Rise from transitory things 

Towards heaven, they native place.' ' 

It took persecution to scatter the early disciples from 
Jerusalem, that they might go everywhere preach- 
ing. When the church gets too comfortable, some 



124 The Evangelistic Message 

afflictive dispensation is often necessary to call her 
to a sense of duty. God stirs her up. And the sin- 
ner seeks comfort in his sins, but finds none. The 
way of the transgressor is hard. Sin may, indeed, 
so benumb and deaden the conscience for a season 
as to make the life unafraid and comparatively 
calm ; but it is the calm before the storm, the fancied 
security when destruction is imminent. The awak- 
ening, the torment, that is sure to come to all not 
included in the covenanted mercies of God will be 
like the prickings and tearings of a thousand 
thorns; but all — all — to the end that salvation may 
come. 



THE WEAKNESS OF STRENGTH 

* * # But he knew that Jehovah was departed 
from him. — Judges 16:20. 

IN no character do we have a better illustration of 
the weakness of strength than in Samson. Most 
people are familiar with the main events in his ca- 
reer. He is one of the few men who stand out in 
that rough period of Hebrew history which is re- 
corded in the book of Judges. Measured by our 
present standards of morality there is not much in 
Samson's life to commend him to decent people; 
but measured by the standards of his own day he 
was no doubt better than many of his associates. 

We are interested just now in Samson as he comes 
to the end of his career. He was the strongest man 
of his day. This strength was given to him by Je- 
hovah. Yet he seems to have used it to further his 
own selfish ends until the time came when Jehovah 
departed from him. And with Jehovah went his 
remarkable strength. 

The Test of Strength 

Samson had played into the hands of a woman 
who was seeking to deliver him to his enemies. He 
deliberately lies to this woman to make a show of 
his strength. Three times he tells her the supposed 
secret of his strength, only to mock her by breaking 
himself loose. Then, in a moment of weakness, he 
reveals the real secret. When the locks are shorn 
from his head Jehovah departs from him, and he 
awakens to the fact that his strength is gone. "And 
the Philistines laid hold on him, and put out his 
eyes; and they brought him down to Gaza, and 

125 



126 The Evangelistic Message 

bound him with fetters of brass; and he did grind 
in the prison-house." This, in brief, is the career of 
a man who boasted of his great strength, and who 
thought he could save himself in that strength. 

It is a picture of thousands who have lived since 
Samson's day. "When the body is strong, and the 
mind keen, and the will active, men can do many 
questionable things for a time and then throw them 
off. It is possible for a strong man to play with 
certain sins for a while and get by with it. Some 
have played with the drinking game and yet con- 
trolled it. Some have gambled without being totally 
lost. But sooner or later when men have persisted 
in playing with sin, they reach the place where their 
strength is insufficient to break the hold of the 
enemy. In a day when they least expect it, the 
awakening comes, and their strength is gone. The 
world is filled with these shorn Samsons, whose eyes 
have been put out to all that is high and noble and 
pure in life, and who are grinding in the prison- 
house of sin. It is true that Samson's strength re- 
turned. But it was for no good purpose. It only 
meant his utter destruction. 

The Processes of Sin 

In this story we have outlined three of the most 
deadly processes of sin in its workings in human 
life. Sin always works gradually ; does not attempt 
to gain all its objectives at once. It produces a 
deadening effect upon a man's conscience, making 
him utterly unconscious of the undermining forces 
which are at work. It so deceives a man that he 
supposes all the strength which he has is his own, 
and that God has had nothing to do with either its 
origin or end. 



The Weakness of Strength 127 

Samson did not lose his strength all at onee. 
Early in his career he was led astray through the 
fascination of the strange woman. Early in his life 
he antagonized his enemies with the exhibit of his 
great strength. Gradually he played into the hands 
of these enemies, who at first were so easily de- 
feated, and after a long process of recklessness and 
sin, his strength became weakness. Sin was silently 
sapping its way into his vitals and getting the stage 
all set for the final explosion. And w T hen the end 
came Samson did not know that the Lord had de- 
parted from him. In the beginning of his career he 
realized that his peculiar strength came from Jeho- 
vah. But in his later life he was deceived into be- 
lieving that his strength was his own, and Jehovah 
was left out. It is sin's way of trying to eliminate 
God from human life. 

These processes of sin which destroyed Samson 
are working in every life. The power of sin in a 
soul grows gradually, and generally unconsciously. 
In the thrilling story of his experiences with our 
soldiers in France, Sherwood Eddy tells of how the 
British troops took Messines Ridge. It was a low 
hill, only about three hundred feet in height, but it 
commanded the countryside for miles, and was heav- 
ily fortified by the enemy. Before the attack the 
ridge was undermined with about 500 tons of high 
explosive. On the morning of the engagement, at 
2 :50, the ground suddenly opened from beneath, as 
nineteen great mines were exploded one after an- 
other, and fountains of fire and earth like huge 
volcanoes leaped into the air. Hill 60, which had 
dealt such deadly damage to the British, was rent 
asunder and collapsed. The works of the enemy and 



128 The Evangelistic Message 

untold numbers of their men were blown to pieces, 
and the way paved for a great victory. 

Why is it that so many fall when the hosts of 
hell storm the human soul? It is because the whole 
structure of character has been undermined by the 
processes of sin. Slowly and silently its mines have 
been laid all ready for the explosion on the day of 
the final attack. It was so with Samson, who was 
endowed with what appeared to be superhuman 
strength. It will be so with any man who persists 
in playing with sin and using his strength only for 
himself. 

Conclusion 

It is impossible for any man to save himself in his 
own strength. Some years ago the editor of a great 
magazine asked Peter Clark Macfarlane to write a 
series of articles 'about men who were down and 
out and who had come back. These men were found. 
The stories of their lives appeared in the magazine 
and later in book form under the title of ' ' Those Who 
Have Come Back." And without exception the tes- 
timony of these men was to the effect that they came 
back, not through their own strength, but through 
the help of some outside influence operating in their 
lives. This influence was discovered to be religion. 
The editor of the magazine was disappointed and 
sent Macfarlane out to find another group of men 
who had come back without the influence of religion. 
Just recently Macfarlane told one of his friends that 
he had been searching all over the earth and as yet 
had not found a single subject for this second series 
of articles. There is only one way of salvation, and 
that is through Jesus Christ. 

It is said that on New Year's Eve in 1912, the 



The Weakness of Strength 129 

grandson of John Wanamaker went into Marioures' 
fashionable restaurant in New York and called for 
a bucket of champagne. The fickle, folly-bent crowd 
looked on to applaud the young fool. The waiter 
filled his order. Then he washed his hands in it, 
saying, "So I wash away all my sins for 1911. ' ? A 
bucket full of champagne will not wash away the 
sins of 1911 or any other year, for sin is not a de- 
filement of the hands. It is a disease of the heart, 
and only Jesus Christ can wash it out. 



WHEN GOD IS NEAR 
Seek ye Jehovah while he may be found; call yr 

upon him while he is near. — Isaiah 55:6*. 

T1IH author of the closing chapters of Isaiah was 
torn with conflicting emotions. With an un- 
sparing hand he lays bare the sins of his people. 
(Isa. 59 :3-8.) No preacher ever spoke plainer words 
about sin than these. But his preaching did not end 
with condemnation. Standing before his congrega- 
tion with a yearning and overflowing heart he gives 
one of the most gracious pictures of God's mercy 
for sinners thai has ever been put into human lan- 
guage. A more earnest plea and invitation to the 
sinning soul to accept the love and mercy of a for- 
giving God than the 55th chapter of Isaiah, lias 
never been made. It is out of this wonderful chap- 
ter of pleading and invitation that our text comes. 
The prophets came nearer to universalizing God 
than any of the ancient religious teachers, and yet 
they inner quite gol away from a God of certain 
locations. The words, ''while He may be found" 
hold a suggestion that God is in certain places at 
certain times, in the New Testament we gel away 

from the God o\" definite places. In his conversation 
with the Samaritan woman Jesus gives His great 
utterance on this subject. "The hour oometh, and 

now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the 
Father in spirit and truth: for such doth the Father 
Seek to be his worshippers. God is a spirit, and they 
that worship him must worship in spirit and truth" 
(John 4:28, K 24). Paid in his sermon to the men of 
Athens, places in sharp contrast to their localised 
gods his conception of a universalized Clod. "The 

130 



When God U Near 131 

God that made the world and all things therein 

* * * dwelleth not in temples made with hands * 

* * He is not far from each one of ns: for* in him 
wo live, and move, and have our being" (Acts 17: 
24-28). 

The fact that God is always near to all men does 
not, however, obscure the truth of whiat the prophet 
is saying. For aside from the conceptions of His day 
lie is stating both a principle and a fact the 
principle that God is always willing to give His 
wayward children another chance, and the fact that 
then* are certain experiences in vwry human life, 
certain seasons of the soul, "when God breaks 

through" and is v(>vy near. 

"When God Breaks Through" 

God is often wry near to ns in our hours of wor- 
ship. When the noises and interests of the world 

are shut out, lie finds His great opportunity. Some- 
times Fie comes close to us in the reading of great 

literature, the story of the Struggles of a, soul in a 
novel, or in the strivings of the soul as ]mv\rnyr(\ 

by tlie Christian poets. God often becomes more 

real when we are shocked or stunned by some great 

disaster. In those hours we feel the utter helpless- 
ness of man before the forces of nature, lint (iod 

most often "breaks through" in the intimate, pier- 

SOnal experiences and losses of life. When we have 
sinned and failed, when the hour' of remorse and 

penitence comes, then God comes. And in the hour 

when denth robs us of our dearest ones, God comes 
vc vy near. 

In these hours when (Jod is near, thousands of 
men and women bave made deeisions that have 

changed their' whole career. It is in these hours 



132 The Evangelistic Message 

that the first foundation stones of noble character 
are laid. It is in these hours that conquering faith 
is born. And it is in these hours that the powers of 
hell which hold a human soul are vanquished and 
driven from the field. 

"While He May Be Found" 

Our text is both an invitation and a warning. 
The prophet suggests that a time may come when 
God cannot be found. The idea is not that God 
might hide Himself from man. " Behold Jehovah's 
hand is not shortened, that it cannot save ; neither 
His ear heavy that it cannot hear; but your iniqui- 
ties have separated between you and your God, and 
your sins have hid His face from you" * * * (Isa. 
59:1, 2). The warning is against that condition of 
the soul which may stand as a barrier between it 
and God. Our God will never hide His face from 
those who seek Him in all sincerity and earnestness. 
But it is one of the inevitable laws of our own 
souls that we may hang a veil between our vision 
and the face of God that will make Him invisible. 
If we do not find God it is not the fault of His na- 
ture, but of ourselves. 

In a word of warning to the Ephesians, Paul 
speaks of the tragedy of a hardened heart. (Eph. 
4:17-19.) The author of Hebrews warns his readers 
against the same sin. " To-day if ye shall hear his 
voice, harden not your hearts.' ' He gives this warn- 
ing emphasis by relating the tragic facts of Israel's 
history. 

You would be startled if your physician should 
tell you that your arteries w T ere beginning to harden, 
and that in a few years your life might be snuffed 
out without a moment's warning. Yet you pay very 



When God Is Near 133 

little attention to the warnings of the Bible and 
your preacher concerning the hardening of the ar- 
teries of your soul. 

The story is told of a beautiful Christian girl from 
one of the Southern states who married a rich New 
York merchant. She had been an earnest worker in 
her church. She was loved in her community for 
her character and good work. But the fever heat 
at which she lived in her new home sapped the vi- 
tality of her soul. She turned her back upon the 
church. Some years later while returning from 
California she was injured in a wreck. As the phy- 
sician looked into her beautiful face she said, "You 
must get me back to New York by tomorrow night. 
I have a social engagement which I cannot break." 
"Madame," said the physician, "you have but one 
hour to live." Then, briefly scanning her life she 
exclaimed: "God made His will plain to me, but 
I went the other way. Oh, my God! Only one 
hour ! ' ? 

Conclusion 

To the multitudes who came to hear John the 
Baptist preach he said, "There standeth one in your 
midst whom ye know not." It is true to-day. God 
is always near in Jesus Christ, and to save. Oh, 
men and women, weary with the problems of life ! 
Oh, seekers after power, or wealth or pleasure ! Oh, 
lonely soul, struggling perhaps with some mighty 
temptation, or to free yourself from the bonds of 
some destroying habit — "There standeth a Saviour 
in your midst whom you know not." 

A Christian governor was besieged with appeals 
for the pardon of a convict who was condemned to 
die. He could not see his way clear to pardon the 



134 The Evangelistic Message 

man, but on the day before his death he went to 
the prison and read the Bible and prayed with him. 
He went unannounced and the convict did not rec- 
ognize him. When he had gone another prisoner 
said, "Do you know who that man was?" The con- 
vict replied that he did not. "Well," said his 
friend, "that was the governor." Then in his deep 
despair the convict cried out, "Oh, had I only known 
it, I would have laid hold of him and refused to let 
him go until he had pardoned me." But he did not 
recognize the hour of his opportunity. 

Some day will you cry out in despair and anguish 
because you failed to know the hour when "God 
broke through" to bless and flood your famished 
soul with new power? "Seek ye the Lord while he 
may be found; call ye upon him while he is near." 



THE HOLY SPIRIT AS OUR HELPER 

And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you 
another Comforter, that he may be with you for ever. 
—John 14:16. 

IN all ages the Lord has helped His people. 
This help was adapted to their capacity, "under- 
standing, and the circumstances controlling their 
lives. In more primitive times various rites and 
ceremonies were imposed as the best method of help- 
ing the infant race. But this was without, while the 
new, spiritual way is within. In the old dispensa- 
tion, the Spirit manifested Himself in a wonder- 
working way; in the new, he is the abiding guest of 
the heart. In the old, fear was inspired ; in the new, 
love and life. Jesus was with the disciples while the 
old dispensation yet remained; but his bodily pres- 
ence was withdrawn, that he might be in them 
through the Spirit, which was far better. 

The World Cannot Receive the Holy Spirit 

Speaking of the Holy Spirit Jesus plainly says 
that "the world cannot receive" (John 14:17) Him. 
It is the function of the Spirit to ' ■ convict the world 
in respect of sin, and of righteousness, and .of judg- 
ment' ' (John 16:8-11). This may be done in various 
ways. The worldly man may read the Bible and be 
convicted of sin; or he may be silently influenced 
by the steady, Christ-like example of some Chris- 
tian man or woman; or some event, some action, 
may turn his heart from sin ; or, as is generally the 
case, the word of God may come to him through 
some consecrated personality, some preacher of the 
word it may be, and he turns from sin unto God. 

135 



136 The Evangelistic Message 

Thus it may be said that the influence is first ex- 
ternal that there may be created in the mind room 
for the Holy Spirit. It must be remembered also 
that the Holy Spirit is behind and in the word, the 
event, the action, the influence, or whatever it is 
that convicts and turns the sinner to God. But the 
heart must be cleansed of sin before there can be a 
home for the permanent indwelling of the Holy 
Spirit. "The unspiritual man rejects the things of 
the Spirit of God" (1 Cor. 2:14). 

The Holy Spirit and the Christian 

His presence in the heart is essential to our 
standing and the reality of our Christian experi- 
ence. "But ye are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, 
if so be that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you. 
But if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he 
is none of his" (Romans 8:9). It is also declared 
that "no man can say, Jesus is Lord, but in the 
Holy Spirit" (1 Cor. 12:3). It matters not what 
ceremonies or rites we may have observed, what 
creeds professed, what ecclesiastical organization 
holds our names, if we do not have the Spirit of 
Christ we are none of His. Some consideration of 
this solemn fact would give pause to many an acri- 
monious debate and lessen the loud contention for 
a "restoration of New Testament Christianity," 
when nothing more is apparently meant than the 
form of baptism. We have heard many addresses 
"contending for the faith once delivered to the 
saints"; but we have yet to hear one whose chief 
emphasis was laid upon the restoration of the Spirit 
of Christ. 

The indwelling Spirit creates new conditions, a 
new environment, new circumstances of life. "But 



The Holy Spirit As Our Helper 137 

ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit." "For as 
many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the 
sons of God" (Romans 8:14). A spiritual atmos- 
phere, spiritual views and attitudes, a spiritual pur- 
pose, impulses and affections, and above all a passion 
for righteousness, make up the conditions of the 
new man's life in Christ Jesus. 

That expressive phrase, "the communion of the 
Holy Spirit," carries with it the mystical, but true 
idea, of the great unseen Companion Who walks 
with us in the crowded ways of life, Who becomes 
as intimate as thought itself in moments of medita- 
tion and reflection, and Who lays hold of our hearts 
with an inspiration and power that the world can 
neither give nor take away. Thus we have the Holy 
Spirit as our friend and companion as we tread the 
pleasant or thorny ways of life, — always anear to 
increase our joy, to quiet our turbulent hearts, and 
to comfort us in moments of despair. He also be- 
comes our dependable guide, Who leads us into all 
truth. He takes the things of Christ and makes 
them plain to us. He intercedes in our behalf; He 
renews us; He bears witness to our adoption as sons 
of God; He anoints and sanctifies us; and He cre- 
ates in us that spiritual sap which is transmuted into 
the fruit of "love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kind- 
ness, goodness, faithfulness, meekneks, self-control" 
(Gal. 5:22). 

We heard Dr. Shannon in a recent address tell of 
what a friend said as they were walking through the 
cornfield. His friend asked him what he knew about 
corn. He mentioned one or two obvious things. 
Then his friend told him how the stalk would fail 
to produce any grains at all, but for the pollen fall- 
ing upon the silk, thus fertilizing the ear and caus- 



138 The Evangelistic Message 

ing the substance in the stalk to be transmuted into 
the ripened corn of autumn. Dr. Shannon said he 
exclaimed, "The Holy Spirit of the corn." In some 
such sense it is necessary for the Holy Spirit, sent 
down from heaven, to make us partakers of the di- 
vine nature and to pass something of our physical 
and mental natures into the ripened fruitage of a 
Christian personality. 

The Measure of the Spirit 

God placed no limitations upon the Spirit's power 
in us and over us. Christ said of himself: "For he 
w T hom God hath sent speaketh the words of God: 
for he giveth not the Spirit by measure' ' (John 
3:34). Again, speaking of them that should believe 
on him, he said: "He that believeth on me, as the 
scripture hath said, from within him shall flow riv- 
ers of living water" (John 7:38). Rivers, mark you! 
The Mississippi, the Nile, and the Amazon rolled 
into one, making an immeasurable stream for the 
cleansing and healing of the nations. 

It is pertinent to ask, shall we permit our lives 
to remain channels for the polluted, death-lurking 
waters of sin, or open them to the gladdening, puri- 
fying waters of the river of life ? 



I 



LET BROTHERLY LOVE CONTINUE 

Let your brotherly love continue. — Heb. 13:1. 

T is possible for us all to agree on at least one 
thing that should continue, namely "brotherly 
love." Without it, the observances of religion are a 
solemn mockery. "Without it, there is no tie to bind, 
no heart to feel, no hands to help, and no bliss of 
heaven. The continuance of love is the true Apos- 
tolic Succession, and those who do not have it are 
not in line, have never been, and indeed cannot be 
ordained of God. There is no church but needs it in 
greater fervency; and many are failing to do the 
Lord's work because of jealousies and secret 
grudges, and often of downright hate and malice in 
their hearts toward their brethren in the same 
church, all too often in the same congregation. But 
right here is the vital test of religion. "We know 
that we have passed out of death into life, because 
we love the brethren" (1 John 2:14). "By this shall 
all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have 
love one to another" (John 13:35). 

The Cause and Inspiration of Brotherly Love 

"We love him because he first loved us" (1 John 
4:19). Love' begets love. We also love one an- 
other because we have been made partakers of the 
divine nature, and "because the love of God hath 
been shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit 
which was given unto us" (Romans 5:5). It is not 
possible to have the nature of God in us and not 
love one another. "God is love." As we inherit the 
nature of our parents and are attached to our fam- 
ily, so, being born again not of corruptible seed but 

139 



140 The Evangelistic Message 

of the will of God, we inherit His nature, are at- 
tached to Him and the family of the faithful. This 
love of the brethren is sometimes complained of as 
being a hard duty, because there are so many that 
are not lovable — neither in their person nor in their 
disposition. It is not according to human nature, 
we are told, to love them. That may be. But there 
is a vast gulf between human nature and divine na- 
ture. According to the divine nature it is neither 
hard nor unlovely to bestow our affection upon the 
brethren. All who are partakers of the divine na- 
ture are lovely, certainly in their souls, for God 
makes them so. Soul-beauty, after all, is the only 
real and abiding beauty. But this love of one an- 
other in "the blameless family of God," and that 
same love reaching out to those who know not God, 
is the mystery of the divine experience in our souls. 
The unconverted cannot understand this, for the 
converted man is a mystery — not "The wind that 
bloweth where it listeth," but "every one that is 
born of the spirit." 

" "Were the whole realm of nature mine, 
That were a present far too small; 
Love so amazing, so divine, 
Demands my life, my soul, my all." 

The Duty of Loving One Another 

Human love can be created and controlled by the 
will — certainly to a remarkably large extent; and 
divine love is, to some extent, under our own con- 
trol. As members of the same family we recognize 
the duty of loving one another. It ought not to be 
difficult to recognize this duty in the family of God, 
for we are His children, partakers of His nature, and 






Let Brotherly Love Continue 141 

guided by His spirit. Furthermore, if it were not 
a duty that we could perform, Christ would never 
have said, "A new commandment I give unto you, 
that ye love one another" (John 13:34). And if its 
degree could not be increased, Peter would never 
have given the exhortation to "have fervent love 
among yourselves" (1 Pet. 4:8). Again, unless we 
love one another we belie our profession as Chris- 
tians. "If a man say, I love God, and hateth his 
brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his 
brother whom he hath seen, cannot love God whom 
he hath not seen" (1 John 4:20). 

Last of all, if we fail in this duty of loving one 
another, we are guilty of the greatest sin, for we 
have violated the greatest commandment. Hear the 
words of our Lord: "And one of them, a lawyer, 
asked him a question, trying him: Teacher, which 
is the great commandment in the law ? And he said 
unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all 
thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy 
mind. This is the great and first commandment. 
And the second like unto it is this, Thou shalt love 
thy neighbor as thyself. On these two command- 
ments the whole law hangeth, and the prophets" 
(Matt. 22:35-40). Here we have revealed the great- 
est test to which a Christian can be subjected. To 
disobey the commandment of love — the greatest 
commandment — is to be guilty of the greatest dis- 
obedience, and to approach the sin against the Holy 
Spirit, which hath no forgiveness in this world nor 
the next. 

Restoration of New Testament Christianity 

Those who would restore the New Testament 
church, must ever consider their work far from 



142 The Evangelistic Message 






complete until they have restored the spirit of love. 
It is of the very essence of the Christianity that 
Christ established. Without it Christianity has no 
existence; and yet many have made a virtue of faith- 
fulness in observing outward forms, while hardly a 
word is said about the "new commandment * * * 
that ye love one another." It is so much easier to 
observe the forms of religion than to be filled with 
its love ; to think of some fancied slight or injustice 
to our poor little selves, and to let it rankle and 
build up a wall of hate that separates, than it is 
to love and do good unto them that seem to despite- 
fully use us. To restore primitive Christianity is 
beyond a peradventure a much deeper thing than 
restoring its external ordinances and supposed pol- 
ity. Unless its spirit has been restored there has 
been no restoration, and this cannot be done without 
faith, prayer, consecration, and the utmost discipline 
of the human will bringing it into subjection to the 
love of God and conferring subjective freedom. 

The Measure of Brotherly Love 

Christ gives us at once the standard of meas- 
urement — "as I have loved you" (John 15:12). 
"Hereby know we love, because he laid down his 
life for us : and we ought to lay down our lives for 
the brethren" (1 John 3:16). The apostle Peter ex- 
horts, — "above all things being fervent in your love 
among yourselves; for love covereth a multitude of 
sins" (1 Pet. 4:8). To live a life of sacrificial love 
in each other's behalf; to have a love that so com- 
pletely fills our hearts that we can see nothing in 
others but what is in ourselves; to believe in the 
redemptive, cleansing power of love among breth- 
ren — the love that is above suspicion, that believeth 



Let Brotherly Love Continue 143 

all things, that hopeth all things, that endureth all 
things, is to have something of the measure of the 
divine love in our hearts. 

Is it worth while that we jostle a brother 
Bearing his load on the rough road of life? 

Is it worth while that we jeer at each other 

In blackness of heart — that we war to the knife? 
God pity us all in our pitiful strife ! 

God pity us all as we jostle each other! 
God pardon us all for the triumph we feel 

When a fellow goes down 'neath his load on the 
heather, 
Pierced to the heart. Words are keener than steel 
And mightier far for woe or for weal. 

Look at the roses saluting each other ! 

Look at the herds all at peace on the plain ! 

Man, and man only, makes war on his brother 
And laughs in his heart at his peril or pain, 
Shamed by the beasts that go down on the plain. 

Were it not well in this brief little journey 
On over the isthmus, down into the tide, 

We give him a fish instead of a serpent, 
Ere folding the hands to be and abide 
Forever and aye in dust at his side? 

Is it worth while that we battle to humble 

Some poor fellow soldier down into the dust? 

God pity us all ! Time ef tsoon will tumble 
All of us together, like leaves in a gust, 
Humbled indeed down into the dust. 

— Joaquin Miller. 



A MAN'S LIFE 

* * * Take heed and keep yourselves from all 
covetousness; for a man's life consisteth not in the 
abundance of the things which he possesseth. — Luke 
12:15. 

JESUS was supremely interested in life. For him 
the chief consideration in the universe was "a 
man's life. " There is no profit in any system, even 
though it gain the whole world, which in any way 
stunts, harms, or destroys "a man's life." No evil 
has been more destructive of human life than that 
of covetousness. Jesus was constant in his warnings 
against it. His message is never against wealth or 
riches as such, but always against the sin of covet- 
ousness which they produce in human society. No 
evil has ever entrenched itself more deeply in the 
human order of things than this one. 

A False Philosophy of Life 

Thousands of people in our day actually believe 
that "life consists in the abundance of things which 
one possesses." There are two general causes for 
this false philosophy : 

First, material things are absolutely essential to 
the maintaining of life. Most of the time of most 
people is consumed in getting enough material 
things to keep body and soul together. Making a 
living is no holiday task. So long as we are in the 
body much of our time must be spent in dealing with 
things. 

Second, most people are laboring under a false 
impression of what life really is. They think of it 
as meat and bread and pleasure and clothes — simply 

144 



A Man's Life 145 

that which ministers to the needs of the body, and 
the sensations of our physical nature. 

Because of these two facts we find our age en- 
gaged in a mad race to see who can get hold of the 
largest bulk of mere things. In our modern life 
people live too close together. "When the cities were 
small, and people lived far apart they did not know 
what others had. Now every one knows just what 
his neighbor has. The poor know what the rich 
have. The spirit of parade has been growing in 
our country. People who have like to show off in 
public. These conditions breed covetousness. 

A Vicious Circle 

Because of this mad rush for material things we 
find ourselves living in a vicious circle. The ex- 
tremely rich man is in the lead, and one after an- 
other down to the last man and woman we are cir- 
cling round and round the god Mammon. Day after 
day we have been doing this until the speed has be- 
come terrific, and all around the circle we may see 
the poor, exhausted bodies of those who have 
dropped out. Still the mad race goes on. Each man 
after something more than he has or after some- 
thing which the man in front has. And the motive 
power that keeps this circle going is "covetous- 
ness," the false philosophy that things are all- 
important in life. 

Labor and capital are both in this circle. The 
following incident taken from the report of the 
Federal Commission on Industrial Relations con- 
cerning the strike in the city of Seattle throws some 
interesting light upon the mood of the extreme 
leadership on both sides of the industrial question: 

' ' The representative of the employers was a typical 



146 The Evangelistic Message 

two-fisted, aggressive American business man of the 
west. He informed the Commission that all that 
body was accomplishing was the promotion of un- 
rest and discontent, that there was only one thing 
to do with the organized workers and that was to 
subdue them. "The fight has to go to a finish, and 
for myself/ he said, as he squared his vigorous 
physique, ' I am glad that I am living in a day when 
we can fight it to the end and lick those fellows to 
a frazzle.' The next witness happened to be an 
official of the I. W. W. and he said in brief, 'Why, 
gentlemen, you are simply wasting your valuable 
time; this thing has gone far beyond investigation; 
about all you can do is to hold a postmortem on the 
corpse and report the results. You know we fellows 
have this thing all settled; all that the capitalists 
have got left to do now is to find a soft place to 
fall.' " 

Capital may succeed in crushing labor, and de- 
stroying its organizations; or labor may be able to 
overthrow capital, as it did in Russia, and take 
things into its own hands. But whatever happens in 
the industrial world, men and women will still be 
going round and round that vicious circle until 
somehow the evil of covetousness is gotten out of 
their hearts. It is the craze for the possession of 
things that is at the bottom of all our trouble, and 
until we strike at the source of that craze we have 
not begun to solve any problems. 

What Profit is There? 

Into the midst of this vicious circle Jesus Christ 
steps with his claim that a man's life does not con- 
sist in an abundance of these things we are all seek- 
ing. "What shall it profit a man if he gain the 



A Man's Life 147 

whole world and lose his own life?" he asks. And 
this is the question his followers must ask this age. 

The church is not to deal with the methods by 
which men seek to gain material things. Its word 
must be spoken in the realm where motives are born. 
Right motives do not often lend themselves to the 
furtherance of wrong methods. The church must 
challenge this whole philosophy of life. It must 
teach men that life is more than meat and drink and 
that in the last analysis mere things can never sat- 
isfy the human soul. It must face a thing-crazed 
world with the question, "Suppose you had all these 
things, what would you do with them?" 

The universal experience of both men and nations 
is on the side of Jesus' philosophy. What did it 
profit Rome to become master of the world? What 
did it profit Napoleon to have Europe at his feet? 
What did it profit the Bourbons of France to allow 
conditions to breed the French Revolution? What 
did it profit Germany to dream of world-conquest? 
What did it profit Russia to keep the people in pov- 
erty and ignorance? Here is a rich man dying and 
leaving all his money, but with none to love him or 
mourn his going. What did it profit him? General 
Booth, dying penniless, but with all London weeping 
over his body was far richer than any of these. 

Conclusion 

Life is more than meat and drink to those who 
have accepted Jesus' way. Thousands who have no 
credit at the banks can say, "We have more than 
money." For real life is love, and faith, and hope, 
and peace of mind, and consciousness of duty well 
done and obligations to both man and God fulfilled. 

In a little play called "The Will," James M. Bar- 



148 The Evangelistic Message 

rie has traced the course of "that strange sickness 
of the soul called greed.' ' It is the story of a young 
lawyer and his wife starting life with high ideals 
and unselfish motives, only to be caught in that 
vicious circle of covetousness, and cast aside as mis- 
erable wrecks. It is the tragic story of the end of 
every selfish life. 

We can do no better than listen to, and heed these 
words of the Master, "Lay not up for yourselves 
treasures upon earth, where moth and rust consume, 
and w r here thieves break through and steal ; but lay 
up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither 
moth nor rust doth consume, and where thieves do 
not break through and steal; for where thy treasure 
is, there will thy heart be also." 



THE STRUGGLE OP A GREAT SOUL 

For that which I do I know not: for not what 1 
would, that I do practice; but what I hate, that I do. 
— Romans 7:15. 

Wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me out 
of the body of this death? — Romans 7:24. 

THE seventh chapter of Romans has been a great 
battle-field for theologians. Volumes, in fact 
whole libraries, have been written concerning its 
meaning. But putting all discussion aside we are 
coming to see that this great chapter only reveals 
the richness and fullness of its meaning to those who 
approach it as the revelation of the struggle of a 
great soul. When we read this chapter as the expe- 
rience of the soul of its author, and not as his theo- 
logical discussion of the doctrine of sin, we are in 
a different and a more wholesome atmosphere. 

Dr. J. H. Jowett quotes some critic as saying, 
"The seventh chapter of Romans is the most ter- 
rible tragedy in all literature, ancient or modern, 
sacred or profane. Set beside the seventh chapter 
of Romans all your so-called great tragedies — your 
Macbeths, your Hamlets, your Lears, your Othellos — 
are all but so many stage plays ; so much sound and 
fury signifying next to nothing when set alongside 
this awful tragedy of sin. The seventh chapter of 
Romans should always be printed in blood. Here 
are passions. Here are terror and pity. Here heaven 
and hell meet, as nowhere else in heaven or hell ; and 
that for the last grapple together for the everlasting 
possession of that immortal soul, till you have a 
tragedy indeed, beside which there is no other 
tragedy." 

149 



150 The Evangelistic Message 

And he adds, "The observations of this critic are 
true. That is just what this chapter is and does. 
It describes the supreme tragedy of the human soul ; 
the supreme tragedy of life. It describes the daily 
array of contending combatants even upon the plane 
of the sanctified life. To these hostilities there is no 
truce; the apparent departure of the foe is only a 
feint for a subtler approach. The enemy is on the 
field when the night falls, and he is on the field in 
the morning." 

The Tragedy of Life 

This struggle of a soul in the warfare between the 
higher and lower natures, is the deepest tragedy of 
life. Paul was not the first man who gave expres- 
sion to it. Xenophon says in trying to excuse his 
treasonable designs, "Certainly I must have two 
souls; for plainly it is not one and the same which 
is both good and evil; and at the same time wishes 
to do a thing and not to do it. Plainly then, there 
are two souls, and when the good one prevails, then 
it does good; and when the evil one predominates, 
then it does evil." This struggle has been a com- 
mon theme of all great literature. Perhaps the 
classic illustration, and one that will never grow old 
so long as human nature remains as it now is, is the 
story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Stevenson. 

Edgar Allan Poe, whose own life was an example 
of this tragic struggle, gives a vivid picture of the 
soul caught in the meshes of an awful temptation, in 
his poem called "Ulalume." In the poem Poe's soul, 
his higher nature, is represented in Psyche. The 
other voice is that of his lower nature. The term 
"Ulalume" means the loss of the higher side of one's 
nature, the loss of the soul. 



The Struggle of a Great Soul 151 

But the greatest illustration of this struggle is 
to be found in our own experience. Every man 
knows that there are two antagonistic forces within 
himself. In his darkest moments he realizes that 
" there are possible depths in his soul, deep beneath 
deep, hell beneath hell, into which it makes him 
shudder to gaze." And in his highest moments he 
is aware of the "possible heights, galleried glories, 
soaring, stretching to the very throne of God, which 
he may reach." "What a mixture is man! There 
is that within the soul that could soar on the wind in 
the skies above the clouds ; and yet there are those 
brutal passions which would chain that soul as a 
galley-slave to the earth." Man asks, "What is that 
within me which aspires, and what is that within me 
that clips the wings of aspiration, so that I crawl 
like a worm in the dust?" And Paul answers out 
of his own experience, "It is the law of sin." 

Paul's Remedy 

This is the tragedy, but for it Paul suggests a 
remedy. He hears the experience of his own soul 
echoed in the tragic cry, "0, wretched man that I 
am, who shall deliver me from the body of this 
death?" and he answers, "I thank God through 
Jesus Christ our Lord * * * for the law of the 
spirit of life in Christ Jesus, hath made me free from 
the law of sin and death." Jesus Christ is the lib- 
erator from sin, and the new power which Paul 
found working in his own life is expressed in Ro- 
mans 6 :1-11. To take Jesus as a Savior, to be buried 
with Him in baptism, to be engrafted into Him; this 
is the only sure remedy for sin. 

It is well to notice the words of this eleventh 
verse of the sixth chapter. To become a Christian 



152 The Evangelistic Message 

does not mean that this struggle is ended. The fight 
is still on. and in earnest, for the lower nature has 
lost ground. What Jesus does in a man's life is to 
change his attitude toward things. With Jesus in 
your life you become dead, or unresponsive to sin. 
Those things which you once loved do not attract 
any longer. Temptation lures, but there is a power 
within that is stronger than temptation. With Jesus 
in your life you become alive, or responsive to God. 
Those higher things which did not appeal to you 
before are now attractive. Your life has been 
changed and re-enforced by new currents of spir- 
itual power. 

Conclusion 

Do we want "the spirit of life in Christ Jesus' ' 
working in us ? We all know, and some of us from 
bitter experience, that the struggle of the soul with 
sin is real. We are aware of this law which works 
in our bodies. Yet we follow the lead of our lower 
nature and allow sin to become deeper and deeper 
entrenched. We prefer to be slaves to "the law of 
sin and death." rather than free men and women 
through "the law of the spirit of life in Christ 
Jesus." 

Over in England a few years ago a circus man 
won great fame as a trainer of serpents. One win- 
ter the circus was showing in a large Opera House 
in London. The curtain went up for an evening per- 
formance, and in the center of the stage stood this 
trainer with a large serpent at his feet. The man 
made a few motions with his wand and the snake 
began to wind itself around his. legs. It kept 
winding until it had almost reached his waist. He 
dropped his hands to his sides and soon it had 



The Struggle of a Great Soul 153 

coiled itself around him up to his shoulders. Then 
up and up until the whole man was covered and 
the serpent reared its head high in the air. The 
audience broke into a wild applause at this daring 
feat, but their applause was frozen into horror, as 
the great serpent, excited by the noise, began to 
tighten its muscles, and they saw the life of the 
trainer crushed out before them. 

This is a picture of the power of sin when we al- 
low it to become master of our lives. Many a soul is 
crushed in the hour of what seems to be its greatest 
triumph and success, because sin has slowly been 
gaining possession of it. He who plays with sin, 
who heeds continually the call of his lower nature, 
is playing with the most deadly thing in the uni- 
verse. Jesus alone can give us power to overcome. 



THE PERFECT IDEAL OF LIFE 

And it shall come to pass in that day. that the root 
of Jesse, that standeth for an ensign of the peoples, 
unto him shall the nations seelx. — Isa. 11:10. 

M HP HE power of setting up imagery so as to re- 
-L act upon the soul, is one of the divinest and 
most energizing elements in our complex being,' ' 
says Beecher. To lift an ideal, and substitute a bet- 
ter thing for that which we already have lies at the 
root of all progress, all growth. 

It specially belonged to the Hebrew peoples to 
seek out the true way of holiness, the true God, and 
His life. Their ideal of Him was often crude, but 
it grew constantly, until some of the rapt seers 
caught glimpses of its universality. Isaiah saw it 
taking form in a perfect person, the Suffering Serv- 
ant of Jehovah, Who should bear the sins of many 
and heal us with His stripes. 

Our lives are rich or poor, high or low, noble or 
ignoble, in proportion as their ideal is low or high. 
For the highest development, we must have the most 
perfect ideal. 

Elements of the Perfect Ideal 

1. It must have power to touch the deepest, high- 
est, finest intuitions of the soul, calling them forth 
into dominating power. The unholy tendencies of 
our nature must be checked and starved and crushed 
out by the cultivation and growth of our higher 
tendencies. The growing grain must crowd out the 
weeds. 

2. The true ideal will keep in advance of our prog- 
ress. A law, to be of the greatest benefit, must be 

154 



The Perfect, Ideal of Life 155 

something better than our practice under it. If you 
write as well as the copy, you have no need of it. 
If you know as much as the teacher, you have no 
need of one. If you reach your ideal, progress ends. 
To the last day of life, the perfect ideal will be in 
advance of all our progress. 

3. It must possess true moral and spiritual ele- 
ments. Morality is fundamental. All questions, at 
bottom, if they are worth considering at all, are 
moral questions. Without it, life becomes tame and 
insipid. Morality is the salt, the flavor of life. But 
morality needs to be touched by spirituality to make 
it powerful. Morality is the fuel, spirituality is the 
flame. The figure of a man without a head would 
be incomplete. Morality is the body, spirituality 
the head. 

4. Altruism must be an important part of this 
ideal. No purely selfish ideal can be perfect. Sin 
is believed to be, in its last analysis, selfishness. Our 
destiny is inseparably linked with our fellows. No 
man liveth unto himself. We cannot simply look 
upon our own things, but also on the things of 
others. 

5. It must be practicable, workable. No age has 
been so practical as our own. America has given 
one philosophy to the world — Pragmatism, which 
sets forth the doctrine that "the only meaning of 
truth is the possibility of verification by experi- 
ence/ ' and that "truth is the term applied to what- 
ever it is practically profitable to believe." The 
philosophy has its manifest limitations, but it em- 
phasizes a phase of our modern life. Let the perfect 
ideal touch the skies, as it must to be perfect, but 
let it also be of the utmost practicability. 



156 The Evangelistic Message 

6. It must not be subject to death. If, after all 
our endeavor, the grave engulfs all, our idealism 
stands for naught. It must have in it the power of 
an endless life. 

Where This Ideal Can Be Found 

Only once in the history of the world were these 
elements blended, epitomized, in the perfect man — 
Christ Jesus. He meets all the conditions. 

Christ touched men's bodies and their diseases left 
them. He touched their souls and they burst into 
the flower of a new life. The centuries confirm the 
fact that Jesus always drew out that which is high- 
est and finest in the soul. 

He has always been in advance. There have been 
many professing holiness, and a few perfection, but 
none have measured up to him. Whatever our at- 
tainments, there remain unreached heights. 

He was morally and spiritually perfect. Men have 
found fault with the church, the Bible, the institu- 
tions of religion ; but they have been unable to con- 
vict Christ of sin. He was morally perfect, the 
skeptics themselves being witnesses. They find no 
fault in him. 

He was the most altruistic, unselfish, of all men. 
The foxes had holes, the birds had nests, but the Son 
of Man had not where to lay His head. He gave all 
for the redemption of the world. 

His life wedded the highest to the most prac- 
tical. His life and teaching were inseparable. He 
practiced what he taught and taught what he prac- 
ticed. Men scoffed then as they do now, at the "im- 
practicability" of His teachings; but the disciples 
caught the inspiration and united idealism and life. 



The Perfect Ideal of Life . 157 

"Paul, Luther, Howard, all the crowned ones, 
Who star-like gleam through time, 
Lived out before the clear-eyed sun, 
Their inmost thought sublime. 
Those truths, more beautiful than day, 
They knew would quicken men, 
And deeds at which the gazers sneered, 
They dared to practice then; 
'Till those who mocked their young ideal 
In meekness owned it was the real. 

jfc je. jfc. 

"ZP TV" *?S" 

Fear not to build thine eyrie in the heights, 

Bright with celestial day; 

And trust thyself unto thine inmost soul 

In simple faith alway. 

And God shall make divinely real 

The highest form of thy ideal." 

Jesus was the only Lord of both worlds. He had 
power to lay down His life, and He had power to 
take it up again. The ideal lived out in Him could 
never die; death had no dominion over it. If it 
saved Him from the darkness and destruction of the 
grave, it will also save us. This ideal does not fail 
in the most crucial agony of life. 

Power of the True Ideal 

It has renewing, transforming power. It can 
make anew the meanest lives. Dr. John Todd tells 
of a visit the Queen of England made to a paper 
mill. She inquired about the use made of a pile of 
filthy rags of different colors which she observed. 
Her Majesty was assured that they could be cleansed 
and made into beautiful white paper. A few days 
after the visit the Queen found upon her table, bear- 
ing her initial and likeness, some of the most beauti- 



158 The Evangelistic Message 

ful white paper she had ever seen; and accompany- 
ing the gift was a note assuring her that it had been 
manufactured out of the very rags that her Majesty 
had seen. Such is the power of this ideal to cleanse 
and make our human lives over. 

It inspires us to keep up the fight against the 
wrong, it matters not how deeply entrenched it may 
be. The man who follows the true ideal has strength 
and courage to dig down the strongholds of un- 
righteousness. When Garrison began his agitation 
against slavery, he was following an ideal that led 
him to fight in the most dangerous and self-sacrific- 
ing way. 

The man who is strong to fight his fight, 

Whose will no force can daunt, 

While truth is truth and right is right, 

Is the man that ages want. 

He may fail or fall in grim defeat, 

But he has not fled the strife, 

And the house of earth shall smell more sweet 

For the perfume of his life. 

— Paul Laurence Dunbar, 

Such an ideal has power to influence the nation. 
Nations are made up of individuals. If in each in- 
dividual life is the highest ideal, inevitably the na- 
tion will have the highest. But if its ideals are low, 
it is because the people's ideals are low. Hamilton 
Wright Mabie interprets a genius as one who gives 
adequate expression to the deep feelings and ideals 
of the people. Patagonia has no geniuses, while 
Scotland has many. 

It is the solution for our present day problems. 
That which is obscure in the lowlands becomes plain 



The Perfect Ideal of Life 159 

as we ascend the mountain. The solutions we try 
to find while following the low are hard to get, and 
are only temporary in their nature. Christ taught 
us to lift up the highest, and to seek our solutions in 
its light. "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on 
earth as it is in heaven. " The will of heaven is 
the law for earth. Heaven and earth are one. The 
New Jerusalem, the model city, descends from God 
out of heaven. 

All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good 

shall exist; 
Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, 

nor power 
Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for 

the melodist, 
When eternity affirms the conception of an hour; 
The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth 

too hard, 
The passion that left the ground to lose itself in 

the sky, 
Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard ; 
Enough that he heard it once ; we shall hear it by 

and by. 

— Robert Browning. 



A CONSCIENCE VOID OF OFFENCE 

Herein I also exercise myself to have a conscience 
void of offence toward Ood and men always. — Acts 
24:16. 

CONSCIENCE is "the activity or faculty by 
which distinctions are made between the right 
and wrong in conduct and character ' ' ; in other words 
it is "the moral judiciary of the soul — not law, nor 
sheriff, but judge. " It is a moral, or ethical, conclu- 
sion, or judgment, by the whole personality. It may 
be said that conscience is the practical reason and not 
some inexplicable endowment. 

Conscience and God 

Daniel Webster is reported to have said, in reply 
to the question as to the greatest thought that ever 
entered his mind, that it was the thought of his 
personal responsibility to a personal God Without 
this sense of the personality of God, there would 
be no sense of duty, and hence no moral judgments 
of any kind. Conscience and duty are of the essence 
of the relation between a finite and an infinite per- 
sonality. "In conscience we see an l alter ego/ " 
says Knight, " in us yet not of us, another Personality 
behind our own." Or to put it in the words of 
Martineau: "Over a person only a person can have 
authority * * * A solitary being, with no other 
sentient natures in the universe, would feel no duty. ' ' 

As the stars do not create the law of gravitation 
which they obey ; so neither does man, nor all of the 
rational beings in the world, create the law of duty. 
Man discovers this law through a revelation from 
God and the development and refinement of his own 

160 



A Conscience Void of Offence 161 

higher powers, which enable him to make the law of 
God his own by the free exercise of his faculties. 
Man tests his own judgment by the revelation of 
God. Man's conscience or moral judgment may be 
said to be like a watch. We go by it on the assump- 
tion that it is right; but when this assumption causes 
us to miss an important engagement, or a train, we 
find that the watch is wrong. We had failed to 
regulate it from time to time by a standard 
clock. So man must test his conscience, his moral 
judgments, by the revelation of God. 

The Education of Conscience 

The differences that arise among people over what 
is right or wrong is partially, at least, explained by 
the different degrees in which their consciences have 
been educated. Paul could say in all truth that he 
persecuted the church with a "good conscience.' ' 
His judgment was wrong. His mind had been filled 
with prejudice and misinformation. As soon as he 
came into possession of trustworthy evidence — the 
voice of Jesus Himself declaring who He was — his 
conscience was reversed, but no better than before. 
He had always followed his best judgment; but it 
took a revelation to make that judgment perfect so 
far as Christ was concerned. 

Conscience is not only educated by receiving the 
truth, with necessary additions from time to time, 
but also by direct communion with God. Fellow- 
ship with the holy spirit of God purifies and refines 
our minds and lifts us above the din and fog of 
earthly things and thus brings our moral judgments 
more perfectly into harmony with the will of God. 

Conscience is also educated by obedience to the 



162 The Evangelistic Message 

truth we know. Lord Erskine was noted for the 
fearlessness of his contentions against the Bench. 
This was his explanation: "It was the first com- 
mand and counsel of my youth always to do what 
my conscience told me to be my duty, and leave the 
consequences to God. I have hitherto followed it, 
and have no reason to complain that any obedience 
to it has been even a temporal sacrifice; I have found 
it, on the contrary, the road to prosperity and 
wealth, and I shall point it out as such to my chil- 
dren." A good minister of Christ said that he early 
resolved never to preach anything that he did not 
honestly and sincerely believe. His has been a 
strong and influential ministry as a consequence of 
this resolve. "If any man willeth to do his will, he 
shall know of the teaching, whether it is of God, or 
whether I speak from myself" (John 7:17). 

The Social Aspects of Conscience 

As already pointed out, the conception of con- 
science could not exist, were it not for personal 
beings and their relations. We are related to God 
in a social way, and revelation and standards of 
judgment result from this relationship. This fa- 
miliar petition, "And forgive us our debts, as we 
also have forgiven our debtors," sets up a social 
standard. The condition of our acceptance with 
God is the acceptance of our brother. We must be 
right in our relations with one another in order to 
be right with God. The heart that cannot forgive 
a brother need not expect the forgiveness of God. 
The command of our Lord, "Thou shalt love thy 
neighbor as thyself," sets up another ethical stand- 
ard. "A conscience void of offence toward * * * 
men always" requires that their interests, their 






A Conscience Void of Offence 163 

welfare, shall have the same consideration as our 
own. This means that the injustices that men do 
to their fellows in impersonal ways must cease. 

The Re-enforcement of Conscience 

It is a mistaken conception that men will do right 
just because they know what the right is. "For I 
know that in me, that is, in my lower self, nothing 
good has its home; for while the will to do right is 
present with me, the power to carry it out is not. 
For what I do is not the good thing that I desire to 
do; but the evil thing that I desire not to do, is what 
I constantly do" (Rom. 7:18, 19). Paul lived with 
a "good conscience," yet he was not able to carry 
out all that his conscience approved. The law 
brought knowledge of sin, but no power to overcome 
sin. He needed help from without. He tells us how 
it came and what it was. "There is therefore now 
no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus; 
for the Spirit's Law — telling of life in Christ Jesus 
— has set me free from the Law that deals only 
with sin and death. For what was impossible to 
the Law — powerless as it was because it acted 
through frail humanity — God effected. Sending His 
own Son in a body like that of sinful human nature 
and as a sacrifice for sin, He pronounced sentence 
upon sin in human nature ; in order that in our case 
the requirements of the Law might be fully met. For 
our lives are regulated not by our earthly, but by 
our spiritual natures" (Rom. 8:1-4). The Spirit's 
law of life, provided through the atoning sacrifice of 
Christ, brought re-enforcement, and consequently 
triumph over sin. Conscience brings the sense of 
sin and the sense of duty ; but it is Christ Jesus who 
brings the power that triumphs over sin. 



164 The Evangelistic Message 

The Impairment of Conscience 

Conscience through inactivity may become hard- 
ened. The water in the still pond more quickly films 
over with ice than in the running stream. Let the 
waters be moved and the film will be broken; but 
let them remain quiet and the first glaze hardens 
into thick ice. So if the conscience is kept in an 
active healthy condition, the chilling frosts of the 
world will have no power to harden it. An old his- 
torian tells us about the Roman armies that marched 
through countries burning and destroying every 
living thing — "they make it a solitude, and call it 
peace," he says. So men may do with their con- 
sciences. They may stifle every cry, until at length 
there is a perfect stillness, unbroken by any voice 
of either approbation or blame. So they have peace ; 
but it is the peace of death. 

" Good-bye, ' ' I said to my conscience, 

"Good-bye for aye and aye." 
And I pushed her hands off harshly, 

And turned my face away, 
And conscience, smitten sorely, 

Eeturned not from that day. 

But the time came when my spirit 

Grew weary of its pace, 
And I said, ' ' Come back, ' ' to my conscience, 

"For I long to see thy face." 
But conscience cried, "I cannot, 

Remorse sits in my place." 

— Paid Laurence Dunbar. 



THE SCALE OF FAITH 

# # # Lord, I believe, help Thou mine unbelief 
* * * — Mark 9:24. For I am persuaded that 
neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, 
nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 
nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall 
be able to separate us from the love of God, which is 
in Christ Jesus our Lord. — Romans 8:38-39. 

OUR first text comes from one of the most inter- 
esting narratives in the gospels. It is a cry of 
faith which has just been awakened in the soul. 
The second comes from the experience of a soul that 
had gone up the scale of faith until it was able to 
sound forth its highest note. Somewhere between 
these two experiences every soul finds itself. Two 
important thoughts are suggested in the contrast of 
these passages. First, the infinite sympathy which 
Jesus had with those who were at or near the bot- 
tom of the scale of faith. Second, the revelation 
that to reach the highest note in the scale of faith 
is no easy accomplishment. 

The Beginning of Faith 

Jesus always showed remarkable interest and 
sympathy in a soul in which faith was just awaken- 
ing. What little faith the father in Mark's story 
had in Jesus' power to heal his boy, was awakened 
by the kindly interest and attitude of Jesus. When 
Jesus met the Samaritan woman he knew he was in 
the presence of a soul that had never been awakened 
to real faith. Her conversation revealed her belief 
in the traditions of her people, her untrue and im- 
moral life, and the faint hope in her soul of the 

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166 The Evangelistic Message 

coming of the Messiah. And from this revelation, 
Jesus, through His interest and sympathy trans- 
formed her dormant hope into the beginnings of an 
active faith. The Centurion who at first had only a 
little faith in Jesus' power, was encouraged and 
commended for that faith. And for the woman who 
touched even the hem of His garment, He had sym- 
pathy and interest enough to say, "Thy faith hath 
made thee whole, go in peace." 

Jesus has never changed this attitude toward the 
beginnings of faith. Any man who is willing to 
start at the bottom of the scale with the "prayer, 
"Lord I believe, help thou mine unbelief/ ' will not 
be disappointed. 



' Wherever one repenting soul 
Prays, in its agonies of pain, 
By God's sweet grace to be 
made whole * * * , " 






there Jesus is, ready to receive the first evidence 
of faith and help it to become a living thing. 

The Heights of Faith 

It is a long, long distance up the scale of faith 
to its highest note, and in every case on record this 
victorious faith has been wrought out in the white- 
heat of some great experience, or in the tragedy of 
some moral and spiritual failure. The great ex- 
amples of faith at its heights are to be seen not in 
"those who have thrown faith away as a fiction and 
given up in the fight — that is the way of the coward — 
but in those men and women who have faced all 
the facts of life as they are at their worst, and yet 
won." 






The Scale of Faith 167 

Joseph Fort Newton in a splendid sermon on 
faith, from which the thought of this sermon came, 
holds that "Triumphant Faith " is the theme of the 
Book of Job. "Property, family, health, faith, hope, 
everything gone, everything except his sense of 
moral integrity!" This is the tragic picture of Job. 
Yet, says Newton, "Holding to the moral ideal, he 
made appeal to a Reality above and beyond all 
known and knowable things — a Reality more com- 
manding than what men called God, more lasting 
than what men call life. Slowly, under the burden 
of anguish, he began to perceive that, after all, there 
may be a greater God than man had ever dreamed; 
and then this possible, conceivable God becomes the 
true God — the real God who is just. Though bowed 
low he is not broken, and out of the depths he 
cries, 'I know that my Redeemer livethP The brute 
atheistic fact bludgeoned his faith and broke it, 
but he won a higher faith which, in turn, forced 
the darkest facts of life to yield him light. Without 
his tragedy he would never have felt the need of 
that higher faith, much less having won it. Having 
felt the worst he found the best, and his faith was 
proof against flood, and fire, and storm, and death. 
It was not a theory about life, but a trophy won 
from life — the one victory worth the winning." 

How did Paul win his triumphant faith? Let him 
tell his own story: (I Cor. 4:11-13; II Cor. 11:24-29. 
Moffatt's translation.) And besides all this Paul 
had his "thorn in the flesh." He never tells us what 
it was but we know that when he ran he was handi- 
capped, and when he fought he fought in pain. 
When he finally reached Rome, the height of his 
ambition as a missionary, he was in chains. 
"Chained to a Praetorian Guard, dwelling in his 



168 The Evangelistic Message 

own hired house, misunderstood by the Jews, mentally 
torn concerning his approaching trial, weakened by 
the subtle oncoming of age, keenly aware of the 
danger of a martyr's death, deserted by all save one 
or two faithful associates — the house becomes a 
church, the preacher's voice is vibrant with high 
emotion. Never was the gospel better preached 
than by this missionary handicapped in Rome." 
Never was faith more triumphant. 

Perhaps the greatest Biblical illustration of a man 
who found triumphant faith through the tragedy of 
moral and spiritual failure is that of David. "When 
the true meaning and guilt of his sin and failure 
was forced upon him, "out of the depths of his 
soul" he cried up to God for forgiveness. And while 
the evil effects of his sin were not taken away, yet, 
in the consciousness which came into his soul that 
his sin had been forgiven, that ' ' as far as the east is 
from the west, ' ' just so far had his transgressions been 
removed from him, he found the faith which enabled 
him to write, "The Lord is my Shepherd * * * 
Jehovah is my light and my salvation * * * whom 
shall I fear? Jehovah is the strength of my life, 
of whom shall I be afraid?" 

Conclusion 

There are two ways of meeting the universe. We 
can attempt to meet the ills of life in our own 
strength, or we can meet them in the strength of 
a conquering faith. 

"Out of the night that covers me, 
Black as the pit from pole to pole, 
I thank whatever gods may be 
For my unconquerable soul. 






The Scale of Faith 169 

"In the fell clutch of circumstance 
I have not winced nor cried aloud. 
Under the bludgeonings of chance 
My head is bloody, but unbowed. 

"Beyond the place of wrath and tears 
Looms but the horror of the shade, 
And yet the menace of the years 
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid. 

"It matters not how strait the gate, 
How charged with punishments the scroll, 
1 am the master of my fate: 
I am the captain of my soul." 

This is the poet Henley throwing down the gaunt- 
let to the universe. It is a stirring picture — "the 
picture of a magnificent fight, a titanic man blindly, 
brutely, vindictively squared against the onrushing 
charge of wrathful circumstance * * # It is 
thrilling, but it is pagan; it is inspiring, but it is 
gladiatorial. It means nothing but a raw, fierce 
struggle on the sands of the world's arena." 

There is another and better way. It is the way 
of the soul that can say: "I know him whom I 
have believed * * * " "Yea, though I walk 
through the valley of the shadow of death I shall 
fear no evil * * * " "I know that my Eedeemer 
liveth * * * ' ' It is the way of a great Christian 
poet who could say at the close of his life, 

"For tho' from out our bourne of time and place 

The flood may bear me far, 
I hope to see my Pilot face to face, 

When I have crossed the bar." 



THE ETHICS OF THE PLEA FOR UNION 

Now the God of patience and of comfort grant you 
to he of the same mind one with another according to 
Christ Jesus. — Romans 15:5. 

DR. FRANCIS L. PATTOX thus defines ethics : 
"Ethics is the science that offers a rational 
explanation of the idea of Rightness and Ought- 
ness; and that deals with the life of free personal 
beings under these conceptions, considering it as 
related to an ideal or norm of excellence, conform- 
ity to which is obligatory." We have here a free 
personality brought into relation with rightness as 
an ideal, and the feeling of obligation, or oughtness, 
that moves him to harmonize his actions with this 
ideal. In applying this conception of ethics to the 
special plea that the people known as Disciples of 
Christ make in behalf of Christian Union, we have 
to consider the freedom of all those who have been 
called of God, the rightness of the special plea that 
is being made, and the "conformity to which is ob- 
ligatory." 

The Freedom of the Christian 

Our Master said, "If therefore the Son shall make 
you free, ye shall be free indeed" (John 8:36). The 
context shows that he had in mind freedom from sin 
and its consequent bondage. "We are Abraham's 
seed, and have never been in bondage to any man: 
how sayest thou, Ye shall be made free?" queried 
the Jews; to which Jesus replied, "Every one that 
committeth sin is the bondservant of sin. And the 
bondservant abideth not in the house forever: the 
Son abideth forever." Of very close kin to the 

170 



The Ethics of the Plea for Union 171 

foregoing is the following, "If any man willeth to 
do his will, he shall know of the teaching, whether 
it is of God, or whether I speak from myself" (John 
7:17). Obedience therefore becomes the organ of 
spiritual knowledge, and hence the means of spirit- 
ual freedom. In this way the Son makes us free. 
The freedom, then, to which Christians have been 
called is the deliverance of their souls from the 
power and bondage of sin which enables them hence- 
forth to become the instruments of righteousness. 
Man was made for God and his nature cannot be 
free except in His service. A locomotive is the most 
helpless and unfree thing in the world unless it is 
on the track that was specially prepared for it. It 
was made for a certain environment, and the en- 
vironment at the same time was made for it. God 
exists for us, and we for Him. Outside of this 
relationship man has no proper freedom. Whatever 
is right is of God, and man ought to do — must do — 
the right as he understands it. If it is right for 
Christians to dwell together in unity, and to ex- 
press this unity in union, or co-operation, for the 
world-wide ends of the Kingdom of God, then a 
serious moral obligation rests upon them, and from 
it they cannot escape. 

The Rightness of Unity and Union 

1. To consider the matter, in the first place, on 
grounds outside of the Scriptures, we find that any 
house divided against itself cannot stand. Chris- 
tians are agreed that Christianity is a good thing 
for the individual and for society and that conse- 
quently it should be more widely disseminated. This 
being true, reason dictates that this common under- 
standing, or purpose, should bring about the fullest 



172 The Evangelistic Message 

co-operation, since no worthy progress can be made 
without harmonious effort. 

2. The Scriptures plainly teach that believers 
should be "of the same mind one with another ac- 
cording to Christ Jesus.' ' Our Lord in that notable 
prayer, not many hours before his crucifixion, voiced 
what he deeply felt concerning the unity of his dis- 
ciples. "Neither for these only do I pray, but for 
them also that believe on me through their word; 
that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art 
in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in 
us : that the world may believe that thou didst send 
me * * * And the glory which thou hast given 
me I have given unto them ; that they may be one, 
even as Ave are one ; I in them and thou in 
me, that they may be perfected into one" (John 
17:20-23). After the resurrection of our Lord, the 
descent of the Holy Spirit, and the conversion of 
many souls, we read, "And the multitude of them 
that believed were of one heart and soul" (Acts 
4:32). Thus we see the spirit of unity for which 
He prayed manifesting itself in His church; and 
there is just one note throughout the New Testament 
on this subject, the constant exhortation "to keep 
the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." 

3. Another consideration, if anything further 
might seem to be needed, is that the salvation of 
the world is somehow dependent upon the unity of 
Christians — "that they may all be one: even as 
thou, Father, art in me and I in thee, that they 
also may be one in us: that the world may believe 
that thou didst send me." Christ definitely prays 
that His disciples may be one — to tl>c end that the 
world may believe. Unity and world-wide evangel- 
ism are vitally related. After two thousand years of 



The Ethics of the Plea for Union 173 

the Christian era, only about one-third of the world is 
nominally Christian, or 564,510,000 out of a world 
population of 1,646,491,000. To bring the remain- 
ing two-thirds into the Kingdom will require the 
greatest effort of a united church, and without unity 
of purpose and effort the task is impossible. It is 
easy to believe in the Fatherhood of God and the 
brotherhood of man, when men love each other and 
work together for the accomplishment of common 
ends; but exceedingly hard when distrust, and even 
hate, replace each other, and no common ends are 
recognized. A united church, therefore, is essential 
to faith, essential to world-wide evangelism, and its 
rightness cannot be called in question. 

Obligation of Church Union 

Now what shall we say to these things? The 
Scriptures plainly teach the great importance for 
the Kingdom of God of a united church, especially 
united in the Spirit. This does not mean uniformity, 
for "uniformity brings death, variety brings life"; 
but it does mean oneness of spirit, oneness of life 
and purpose, and the heartiest co-operation in 
spreading the Good Tidings. Unity and co-opera- 
tion belong to the essential nature of the religion 
of Christ. Paul in rebuking the Corinthians for 
their partisanship and divisions, plainly asks, "Is 
the Christ in fragments?" (Weymouth.) 

It would seem that no Christian, who reads and 
honors the Xew Testament, can avoid being a strong 
advocate of just these things. Yet we heard a Chris- 
tian man, one long in the ministry and with schol- 
arly attainments, say that he would not walk across 
the street to unite the churches. 

Of course there are many things that work against 



174 The Evangelistic Message 

union, the chief of which is no doubt denomina- 
tional pride. It is difficult for those who have been 
brought up in a church w T here they have been taught 
that it more than others has the true light and inter- 
pretation of the word of God not to be suspicious 
of all others. There are many other difficulties in 
the way; but whatever they may be, God's true 
children must continue to work for the unity and 
union of all Christians. An ethical obligation rests 
upon them which they cannot avoid. It must be 
done in humility and prayer. The spirit of contro- 
versy will never do it. Jesus prayed when he would 
have his disciples to be one ; and shall his church 
accomplish so great a task with lesser means? 



DEATH 

* * * it is appointed nnto men once to die. — 
Heb. 9:27. 

THE dates inscribed on the monuments tell us that 
here we have no certain tenure of our existence. 
No one in the healthful and rational exercise of his 
faculties desires to be cut off in the midst of the 
years; yet we are the prey of the forces about us. 

"A thousand rocks deep hid elude our sight, 
A star may set and we are lost in night, 
A breeze may waft us to the whirlpool's brink, 
A treacherous song allure us and we sink. 
Death steals upon us in the zephyr's breath, 
And festal garlands veil the shafts of death." 

Death Has No Respect to Persons 

Death is remorseless. To our human thinking the 
sinner should not be cut off in his sin, but should be 
granted further opportunities for repentance; the 
righteous should be spared for the good they 
may do, and the youth for the promise of his life. 
But there is no pity. 

"The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes 
In the full strength of years, matron and maid, 
And the sweet babe, and the gray-haired man — 
Shall, one by one, be gathered to thy side 
By those who in their turn shall follow them." 

Death Bears Universal Sway 

No age of time has been exempt from his universal 
sway. Holy Writ tells us that he reigned from 
Adam to Moses, even over those who had not sinned 

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176 The Evangelistic Message 

after the similitude of Adam's transgression; and 
the geologist presents his fossiliferous specimen, 
which proclaims his reign over the infant world; 
and the archaeologist digs among the ruins of a more 
recent civilization, and presents to us the mummied 
remains of those who paid their tribute in that age. 
When we think of the billions who have thronged 
the planet since the years began, and yet have 
passed away, we conclude that 

"All that tread 
The globe are but a handful to the tribes 
That slumber in its bosom. Take the wings 
Of the morning, traverse Barca's desert sands, 
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods 
Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound 
Save his own dashings, — yet the dead are there! 
And millions in those solitudes since first 
The flight of years began, have laid them down 
In their last sleep, — the dead reign there alone. " 

Does the Grave Receive All? 

Does the grave receive all there is of man? Is 
there anything that escapes the collapse of his cor- 
poreal powers and wings itself to another realm? 
We question, and is there no reply ? Is it true that 
from out the waste seas there drifts no spar; that 
over the desert of death the Sphinx gazes forever, 
but never speaks; that the golden bridge of life 
emerges from gloom and rests on shadow? 

"If all our hopes and all our fears, 

Were prisoned in life's narrow bound; 
If, travelers through this vale of tears, 
We saw no bettor world beyond; 



Death 177 

"Oh, what could check the rising sigh? 
What earthly thing could pleasure give? 
Oh, who would venture then to die? 
Oh, who could then endure to live ? - ' 

Emerson declares that, "Our dissatisfaction with 
any other solution is the blazing evidence of immor- 
tality.' ' "We do not believe in immortality be- 
cause we have proved it," says Martineau, "but 
we forever try to prove it because we believe in it." 
There is universal witness to this belief. 

There are many things that intimate to us that 
the spirit of man has not perished because we have 
not seen it leave the body or beheld it in its blessed 
abode. The realities are, after all, the unseen rather 
than the seen. Herbert Spencer declared to John 
Fisk that we cannot take up any problem in physics 
without quickly coming upon metaphysical ques- 
tions which we cannot answer, neither deny, and the 
same philosopher pushed his inquiries to the point 
where he had to say "there is an infinite and eternal 
energy." He could not see nor explain this energy, 
but he must admit it. Who ever saw the law of 
gravitation, or of chemical affinity, or of molecular 
attraction? They operate in a marvelous way. 
Gravitation holds the worlds in their place, but we 
do not see it. The law of affinity works in our bod- 
ies to distribute supplies to the various parts, but 
no one sees it, and yet were its operations to stop 
we would die instantly. The unseen spirit affords 
no just ground for skepticism. 

Death is not a break in the continuity of our ex- 
istence. It is merely an epochal change. Scientists 
tell us that the polar regions, now capped with ice 
and snow, once flourished as the tropics; but owing 



178 The Evangelistic Message 

to some new inclination of the earth toward the sun 
a revolutionary change was wrought, but still the 
earth revolves and warms in the sun. This may 
intimate to us the change that comes to man. Na- 
ture is full of the instinct of immortality. An old 
Celtic legend tells us that "God sends the gloom 
upon the cloud and there is rain. God sends the 
gloom upon the hill and there is mist. God sends 
the gloom upon the sun and there is winter. It is 
God, too, who sends the gloom upon the soul and 
there is change. The swallow knows when to lift 
up her wing over against the shadow that creeps 
out of the North; the wild swan knows when the 
smell of snow is behind the sun ; the salmon, lone in 
the brown pool among the hills, hears the deep sea, 
and his tongue pants for salt and his fins quiver, 
and he knows that his time has come and the sea 
calls. How, then, shall the soul not know when the 
change is nigh at last? Is it a less thing than a 
reed, which sees the yellow birch-gold adrift on the 
lake and the gown of the heather grow russet when 
the purple has passed into the sky and the white 
bog-down wave gray and tattered where the lone- 
roid grows dark and pungent — which sees and 
knows that the breath of the Death-Weaver at the 
pole is fast faring along the frozen norland peaks. 
It is more than a reed, it is more than a wild doe 
on the hills, it is more than the swallow lifting up 
her wing against the coming of the shadow, it is 
more than a swan drunken with savor of the blue 
wine of the waves when the green Arctic lawns are 
white and still; it is more than these which has the 
Son of God for brother and is clothed with light." 
God will not blot out in the tomb what stands next 
to himself as the most perfect of all earthly beings. 






Death 179 

Effects of Our Immortality 

St. Paul in closing his great argument for the res- 
urrection, concludes by saying: "Wherefore, my 
beloved brethren, be ye steadfast and unmovable, 
always abounding in the work of the Lord, foras- 
much as ye know that your labor is not in vain in 
the Lord." The doctrine had a practical bearing. 

"With eternity in view, we will be more careful 
workmen than would otherwise be the case. The 
quarryman will be more diligent in his employment 
of getting out stone if he feels that he has part in a 
great enterprise to be completed in the future. If 
Paul, spending and being spent that the Kingdom of 
God might be established in Asia Minor, had re- 
ceived an authoritative word that there was, in fact, 
no Kingdom of God, neither now nor in the future, 
his powers would have been paralyzed. He would, 
no doubt, have continued to live a good life; but 
there would have been no zeal, no zest, no earnest- 
ness in his work. His hopes, his interest, his very 
life, would have vanished with his vision of the 
Kingdom of God. The man with eternity in his 
heart will be a better, more conscientious worker, 
whatever his task, than he who believes the grave 
quite closes us in. 

Alas for him who never sees 
The stars shine through his cypress-trees ! 
Who, hopeless, lays his dead away, 
Nor looks to see the breaking day 
Across the mournful marbles play! 
Who hath not learned, in hours of faith, 

The truth to flesh and sense unknown, 
That Life is ever lord of Death, 

And Love can never lose its own ! 

— Whit tier. 



THE SCIENTIFIC DEMONSTRATION OF THE 
RESURRECTION LIFE 

But now is Christ risen from the dead. — I Cor. 
15:20. 

If ye then he risen with Christ. — Col. 3:1. 

IT was hard for the Jew to think of a resurrection 
of any kind that did not involve the idea of the 
resuscitation of matter previously alive but now 
dead. Hence he coupled resurrection with the re- 
vival of the dead body. But resurrection cannot be 
confined to this idea; in fact such idea is not an 
inherent idea of the resurrection at all. Besurrec- 
tion means the rising up of a new, spiritual life that 
displaces the old and gives an entirely new direc- 
tion to the whole of life's activities. 

The Resurrection Scientifically Demonstrated 

Now the resurrection of Jesus Christ was the first 
scientific demonstration of the resurrection. He 
claimed that He would rise again from the dead; 
that death had no power to destroy Him; that the 
life that was in Him was eternal. He declared Him- 
self to be the resurrection and the life. That was 
His belief, and His proclamation. He demonstrated 
it by coming back from the dead and openly show- 
ing Himself alive to His apostles. This proved by 
scientific demonstration that Jesus was right in what 
He said; and it furnishes strong presumptive evi- 
dence that the same will be true of every believer in 
Him. 

180 



Science and the Resurrection 181 

The Demonstration In Each Life 

But the evidence is not to be merely presumptive 
or probable, though the probability be so strong as 
to amount to a certainty — it is to be of the nature of 
demonstrative evidence as it was in the case of 
Jesus. In the nature of the case we cannot die lit- 
erally, each one in his own case, to prove the truth 
of the claims based on what Jesus did; but it is 
given to each one to make a demonstration in his 
own behalf by the use of certain appropriate sym- 
bols which are filled with the same Spirit that was 
in Jesus. By faith and obedience in baptism we 
make this demonstration, and we do then and there 
enter into the resurrection life. We are risen with 
Christ. The resurrection life has come into us. We 
shall die no more. The Spirit bears witness with our 
spirit. 

Its Universal Validity 

This is valid for all who have tried it. It is not 
the narrow experience of just one man here and 
there; but of all persons who have made the demon- 
stration. It is therefore universal — just as univer- 
sal as any scientific experiment can be. If the laws 
are observed, what takes place in a definite scientific 
experiment at a given place will take place wherever 
it is performed. So here. 

The evidence is first in one's own spirit. This 
may not be convincing to any one else, but it is to 
one's own soul. The self has no doubt. "We 
know that we have passed from death unto life." 
The evidence must be valid for the individual. By 
means of a powerful intuition he is made certain 
that the resurrection life is now in him, and that he 
has passed from death unto life. 



" JOINING THE CHURCH" 

* * * And the Lord added to them day by day 
those that ivere saved. — Acts 2:47. 

IN the text quoted from the revised version, the word 
"church" is omitted. Moffatt thinks it diffi- 
cult on account of this omission to get any sense 
out of the original; nevertheless he ventures upon 
this rendering, "Meantime the Lord added the saved 
daily to their number. ' ' Weymouth would thus make 
it intelligible to English readers, "Also, day by day, 
the Lord added to their numbers those whom He 
was saving." Whether the word "church" be al- 
lowed as part of the text or not, it is perfectly plain 
that "those whom he was saving" were added to 
the company of believers, and no one denies that 
these believers were the church. 

The Condition of Membership 

There is just one condition, namely, the possession 
of the Spirit of Christ. This automatically joins the 
soul in fellowship with the "beloved community." 
It makes an addition of the Lord's own adding. The 
Apostle Paul solemnly says, "But if any man hath 
not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his" (Rom. 
8:9). Membership in the spiritual body of Christ, 
which is His church, can be obtained in no other 
way. Man can neither add nor debar. It is the 
Lord who adds the saved to His church, — and "the 
Lord knoweth them that are his." 

But is not the reception of the Holy Spirit con- 
ditioned? Undoubtedly. The Spirit presses against 
the door of the heart seeking entrance, but the bolt 
can only be moved by us. The tides of spiritual 

182 



"Joining the Church" 183 

quickening cannot be released in our hearts until 
we have opened the door. Faith is the hand that 
moves the bolt. Faith is action, obedience to the 
word of Christ ; the will consciously lays hold upon 
Christ. This opens the door to the Holy Spirit. 

Does baptism condition the gift of the Holy 
Spirit? Yes, and no. The household of Cornelius 
received the Spirit before baptism. The same was 
apparently true in the case of Paul. "So Ananias 
went off and entered the house, laying his hands on 
him with these words, 'Saul, my brother, I have 
been sent by the Lord, by Jesus who appeared to 
you on the road, to let you regain your sight and 
be filled with the Holy Spirit.' In a moment some- 
thing like scales fell from his eyes, he regained his 
sight, got up and was baptized.' ' In other cases the 
Spirit was not given until after baptism. When 
the Samaritans "believed Philip, who preached the 
gospel of the Reign of God and the name of Jesus, 
they had themselves baptized, both men and wom- 
en" (Acts 8:12). "When the apostles at Jerusalem 
heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, 
they despatched Peter and John, who came down 
and prayed that the Samaritans might receive the 
Holy Spirit. (As yet it had not fallen upon any of 
them ; they had simply been baptized in the name of 
the Lord Jesus.) Then they laid their hands on 
them, and they received the Holy Spirit.' ' In like 
manner Paul laid his hands on the twelve disciples 
of John, w^hom he found in Ephesus, and "the Holy 
Spirit came upon them" (Acts 19:6). It is an ar- 
resting fact, in this connection that the Apostles 
were filled with the Spirit on Pentecost, knowing 
only the baptism of John. 



184 The Evangelistic Message 

Baptism for those who have already received the 
Spirit, is a sign, a symbol, a confession before the 
world concerning what the Lord has done in cleans- 
ing and purifying the heart. Baptism for those who 
have not received the Spirit, as in the case of the 
Pentecostians and the Ethiopian eunuch, is a prayer, 
an action, a moving forward to take what has been 
promised; for Peter, speaking under inspiration, 
said, "Repent ye, and be baptized every one of you 
in the name of Jesus Christ unto the remission of 
your sins ; and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy 
Spirit.' ' So the believing, confessing heart has re- 
leased to itself, times without number, the energies 
of the Holy Spirit in the act of baptism. Possessing 
the Spirit, by whatsoever means obtained, we are 
members of the church of the first born whose names 
are in the book of life. Forms and symbols are 
meaningless without the Spirit. 

The Place of the Highest Culture 

Dr. Goodell in his latest book, "Heralds of a 
Passion/ ' has a pertinent chapter on "Culture — A 
Load or a Lift." Much that passes for culture to- 
day is utterly superficial. It leaves the springs of 
life untouched — indeed, it often corrupts them. The 
real, deep, abiding cultural power has its seat in 
Christ and His church. Here are cultivated the 
finest feelings, the most tender and beautiful sym- 
pathies, and the sweetest fellowships. It is not 
strange that a gentleman, who was having his 
daughter educated in London while Dr. R. J. Camp- 
bell was pastor of the City Temple, directed that she 
should hear this noted preacher on every Sunday as 
a part of her education. This man had a well 
grounded conception of the true meaning of educa- 



"Joining the Church" 185 

tion. No life can be complete without availing it- 
self of the culture which the church affords ; for true 
culture is more of the heart than of the head, though 
the church offers both in their best form. 

An Opportunity for the Noblest Service 

We make our contribution to life by rendering 
some worthy service to our fellowmen. The church, 
aside from inspiring us to do our best in every ac- 
tivity, offers through its own channels opportunities 
for the highest service. It is said that the merchant 
prince John Wanamaker has won more men to 
Christ than any preacher in Philadelphia. There 
could have been rendered no higher service than 
this. It means the qualifying of men for two worlds 
— the making of happy homes, happy social rela- 
tions — and in the end everlasting life. 

The Church and Final Salvation 

It is difficult, if not impossible, for any man to 
be saved alone. Salvation is a process that is worked 
out in fellowship with each other. "If we love not 
our brother whom we have seen, how can we love 
God whom we have not seen?" It is easy to be- 
lieve in God when we are with good people ; .difficult, 
when with evil. A young man was sorely tried in 
his faith. The intellectual difficulties seemed too 
great to be overcome. But the patient, tender, beau- 
tiful, and Christ-like disposition, which he daily wit- 
nessed in his father, brought him back to faith and 
held him to the church. Believers strengthen belief 
in others. Love begets love. The flaming spirit 
lights other spirits. God comes to earth and speaks 
with compelling power in every heroic, unselfish sac- 
rifice. God is in His church, and to be near Him 
we must be members of that church. 



I 



WHO WAS JESUS? 

But who say ye that I am? — Matt. 16:15. 

F the reference by Josephus to Jesus is an inter- 
polation, then we have no contemporary record; 
no contemporary mention even, of the life of Jesus 
has been preserved to us. It is the greatest paradox 
of all history. The great ones of history, generally 
speaking, did something during life that gave them 
a record and a fame; but here, strictly from the 
standpoint of the historian, was an obscure person- 
age whose entire theatre of action, so far as known, 
consisted of the petty state of Palestine, at that time 
one of the minor dependencies of Eome. He lives 
but a few years, and His fame is unknown beyond 
the borders of the state in which He had His great- 
est activity. "Yet the historical result of these 
activities was more momentous,' ' says a historian, 
"even from a strictly secular standpoint, than the 
deeds of any other character of history. A new era, 
recognized by the chief civilizations of the world, 
dates from His birth; and whole libraries of 
literature are devoted to every aspect of His life, in 
strange contrast to the paucity of contemporary rec- 
ords.' ' How can such a strikingly unique personal- 
ity be accounted for? 

Heredity Offers No Explanation 

The parents of Jesus were obscure. In several 
generations there had been no outstanding person- 
ality among them. No genius of any sort, so far as 
known, had appeared in the ancestral line within 
several generations. It has been said of Lincoln, 
that he was the only great man whom heredity could 

186 



Who Was Jesus 187 

not explain; and yet heredity as understood to-day 
may offer some explanation in his case. But not 
so in the case of Jesus. What He was, and what He 
did, are in such contrast to all that went before, 
that no hereditary principle in itself is capable of 
suggesting a solution. 

Environment Cannot Explain 

The great names of history have not appeared 
alone. They have usually been surrounded by able 
lieutenants and men of genius. "Heroes, teachers, 
and leaders of men have always been seen as cen- 
tral stars in larger constellations, surrounded by 
lesser but kindred lights, " says Dr. Henry Van 
Dyke. "Plato shines in conjunction with Socrates 
and Aristotle; Caesar with Pompey and Crassus; 
Luther with Melanchthon and Calvin; Shakespeare 
with Beaumont and Fletcher and Ben Jonson; Na- 
poleon surrounded with his brilliant staff of mar- 
shals and diplomats; Wordsworth among the mild 
glories of the Lake poets. In every case, if you 
search the neighborhood of a great name, you will 
find not a blank sky, but an encircling galaxy. But 
Jesus Christ stands in an immense solitude/' He 
even chose as His disciples unlettered fishermen 
from Galilee. "There was nothing in the soil of the 
sordid and narrow Jewish race to produce such an 
embodiment of universal love. There was nothing 
in the atmosphere of that corrupt and sensual age 
to beget or foster such a character of stainless and 
complete virtue' ' (Van Dyke). 

What Jesus Has Done 

(1) He undermined the very intense, sincere, and 
well-founded, but selfish Jewish religion. (2) He 



188 The Evangelistic Message 

destroyed pagan religion. " Sexual and other fleshly 
excesses were the very soul of the mysterious rites 
connected with the worship of Bacchus, Cybele and 
Venus. Public defilement was regarded as an act 
of religion.' ' (3) He laid the foundations of a new 
religion. This was hard to do, when we recall that 
its great doctrine had to do with a crucified Jew, 
and its life with the severest ethics, running counter 
to every established code. (4) He undertook to win 
the whole world to Himself. To-day one-third of it 
is nominally Christian, and all of it under the influ- 
ence of the nations professing Christianity. (5) All 
this has been done within historic time. Jesus be- 
gan His work, not in some legendary age, but in the 
historic period of Caesar Augustus. (6) All has 
been done in the face of calumniators, skeptical 
philosophers, scoffers, heretics and divisions within, 
and bloody persecutions without and within. 

The Means Employed 

This has all been accomplished, not by angels, but 
by men. Nor were many mighty ones called, but 
men without special training in the schools, men of 
rough exterior, without armies, without social in- 
fluence or prestige of any kind — these were the first 
ambassadors of the crucified Jew. But these men 
had what no others possessed — the living Spirit of 
Jesus. Their souls were a flame of fire, and their 
tongues were loosed to proclaim the gospel of His 
resurrection. They overthrew established religions 
and toppled kingdoms by their burning, searching- 
words. So far as the world is able to judge, the 
means employed are exceedingly weak, and out of 
all proportion to the results accomplished. 



Who Was Jesus 189 

The Inevitable Inference 

From all this, and very much more not mentioned, 
it is an inevitable inference that Jesus was no or- 
dinary man, doing His mighty works in the world 
by such powers as men employ. He was so vastly 
different in every way, that the only conclusion that 
can safely be drawn is, that He was indeed God 
manifested in the flesh. Hence that disciple was 
right, who first confessed, "Thou art the Christ, the 
Son of the living God" (Matt. 16:16). The cate- 
gories of historical science, of man-made philosophy, 
cannot explain Him. He was King of kings in the 
realm of intellect, in the purity of His heart, and in 
His unspotted moral nature. There was none like 
Him before, then, nor will there ever be again. 

Subtlest thought shall fail and learning falter, 
Churches change, forms perish, systems go, 

But our human needs, they shall not alter, 
Christ no after age shall e'er outgrow. 

Yea, Amen ! changeless One, Thou only 
Art life's guide and spiritual goal, 

Thou the Light across the dark veil lonely, — 
Thou the eternal haven of the soul. 

— John Campbell Shairp. 



THE ETERNAL CHRIST 

* * * and of his kingdom there shall be no end. — 
Luke 1:33. 

The Universal Christ 

IN the closing chapter of his ' ' Manhood of the Mas- 
ter," Harry Emerson Fosdick shows how Jesus 
has overcome four of the greatest divisions in the 
life of the race. First, He has overcome the divi- 
sions between the successive generations of men — 
the divisions of time. Second, He has overleaped 
the deep division of race. Third, He has overleaped 
the basic division between manhood and woman- 
hood — the division of sex. Fourth, He has com- 
pletely bridged the chasm between the successive 
stages of growth from childhood to old age. 

Friend and Saviour 

During his ministry Jesus appealed constantly to 
the universal, or fundamental elements in human 
life. All types of people responded to His call, not 
because He played up their particular cause or 
sought in any special way their favor, but because 
He went deeper than any other teacher had ever 
gone, and found the common source, or common 
ground of all their needs. Rich men, scholars, mil- 
itary men, sick men, women and little children, law- 
yers, farmers, publicans and sinners — all, somehow, 
were attracted to him. Perhaps the greatest as- 
sumption Jesus made was that all men regardless of 
race or color or condition are made of the same stuff, 
and His whole ministry seemed to demonstrate that 
He was not wrong in that assumption. Men and 
women instinctively recognized in Jesus a friend 

190 



The Eternal Christ 191 

Who knew their deepest needs and was giving His 
splendid manhood in an effort to meet them. 

Here we find the explanation of the universality 
of Jesus and the continued power of His kingdom 
through the centuries. He has gone deep enough to 
meet those great needs which are common to all 
men, and He has always stood as the last barrier to 
eternal destruction. 

Man is a wonderful creature. His passions and 
his will power are among the most mighty forces in the 
universe. Barrier after barrier goes down before 
the assault of man's aroused passions and his indom- 
itable will. But somehow, when men have fairly 
and honestly faced the barrier of this Eternal Christ 
they have stopped. When man is tempted to doubt 
the fact of God, it is the revelation of God in the 
face of Jesus Christ that stands between him and 
atheism. When man is tempted to play the selfish 
game of life, to get all he can out of his fellows with- 
out giving anything in return, it is the Christ of the 
Towel and Basin Who stops him. When man sinks 
to the level of the beast and would do those things 
which disgrace and mar his manhood, it is the pure 
character of the Son of God that stays him. 

Conclusion 

And until you have seen this Eternal Christ as a 
Saviour you have never really seen Him at all. You 
do not know Jesus Christ if you have only read 
about Him in a book. You do not know Jesus if 
you have only heard Him preached from the pulpit. 
You do not know Him if you have only gazed upon 
the artist's conception of His lovely face in some 
great masterpiece. You will never know Jesus 
Christ, until in some hour you find the powers of 



192 The Evangelistic Message 

hell in possession of your soul, and find yourself 
being swept away from all that is true and honest 
and pure in your makeup and on to the very gates 
of the destruction of your soul — oh, I say you will 
never know Him, "Whom to know is eternal life," 
until in that hour you see Him standing as the one 
barrier between you and destruction! 

From the earliest centuries the story has come 
that when the storm of persecution broke over the 
Christian church in Rome, the little company of 
believers sought Peter to seek refuge in flight. He 
set out by night along the Appian Way. But as he 
traveled a vision flashed upon him of a figure 
clothed in white and a face crowned with thorns. 
"Whither goest thou, Lord?" Peter cried. "To Rome 
to be crucified instead of thee." 

"Into the night the vision ebbed like breath, 
And Peter turned, and rushed on Rome and 
death." 

A little boy who had been told the meaning of the 
service flags in the windows, seeing the evening star 
in all its brightness gleaming over the roofs asked, 
1 ' Whose star is that ? " He was told, ' ' That is God 's 
star." The boy paused a little, then asked, "Does 
God have a son in the war too?" Yes, God has a 
son in the war — the long endless war between your 
lower and higher natures, between the forces that 
would lift you up and make you a child of God and 
the forces which would drag you down to hell, be- 
tween sin and salvation, between life and death. 
It is a war in which humanity would be lost if it 
were not for the leadership of the Eternal Christ. 
And this Christ calls for strong men and women 
who will make this great fight with Him. 



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